eir jokes and good stories,
sympathetic towards their troubles and sorrows. To Dion she once said
in explanation of her withdrawal from the rather bustling life which
keeping up with many friends and acquaintances implies:

"I think one sometimes has to make a choice between living deeply in the
essentials and just paddling up to one's ankles in the non-essentials.
I want to live deeply if I can, and I am very happy in quiet. I can hear
only in peace the voices that mean most to me."

"I remember what you said to me once in the Acropolis," he answered.

"What was that?"

"You said, 'Oh, Dion, if you knew how something in me cares for
freshness and for peace.'"

"You remember my very words!"

"Yes."

"Then you understand?"

"And besides," he said slowly, and as if with some hesitation, "you used
to long for a very quiet life, for the religious life; didn't you?"

"Once, but it seems such ages ago."

"And yet Robin's not a year old yet."

She looked at him with a sudden, and almost intense, inquiry; he was
smiling at her.

"Robino maestro di casa!" he added.

And they both laughed.

Towards the end of November one day Daventry said to Dion in the
Greville Club:

"Beatrice is going to give a dinner somewhere, probably at the Carlton.
She thought of the twenty-eighth. Are Rosamund and you engaged that
night? She wants you, of course."

"No. We don't go out much. Rose is an early rooster, as she calls it."

"Then the twenty-eighth would do capitally."

"Shall I tell Rose?"

"Yes, do. Beattie will write too, or tell Rosamund when she sees her."

"Whom are you going to have?"

"Oh, Mrs. Chetwinde for one, and--we must see whom we can get. We'll try
to make it cheery and not too imbecile."

As Daventry was speaking, Dion felt certain that the dinner had an
object, and he thought he knew what that object was. But he only said:

"It's certain to be jolly, and I always enjoy myself at the Carlton."

"Even with bores?" said Daventry, unable to refrain from pricking a
bubble, although he guessed the reason why Dion had blown it.

"Anyhow, I'm sure you won't invite bores," said Dion, trying to preserve
a casual air, and wishing, for the moment, that he and his friend were
densely stupid instead of quite intelligent.

"Pray that Beattie and I may be guided in our choice," returned
Daventry, going to pick up the "Saturday Review."

Rosamund said of course she would go on the twenty-eighth and help
Be