sure I shall enjoy it when I'm there," she answered. "I generally
enjoy things. You know that. You've seen me among people so often."

"Yes. One would think you reveled in society if one only knew you in
that phase."

"Well, I don't _really_ care for it one bit. I can't, because I never
miss it if I don't have it."

"I believe you _really_ care for very few things and for very few
people," he said.

"Perhaps that's true about people."

"How many people, I wonder?"

"I don't think one always knows whom one cares for until something
happens."

"Something?"

"Until one's threatened with loss, or until one actually does lose
somebody one loves. I"--she hesitated, stretched out her hand, and drew
some notepaper out of a green case which stood on the table--"I had
absolutely no idea what I felt for my mother until she died. She died
very suddenly."

Tears rushed to her eyes and her whole face suddenly reddened.

"Then I knew!" she said, in a broken voice.

Dion had never before seen her look as she was looking now.

For a moment he felt almost as if he were regarding a stranger. There
was a sort of heat of anger in the face, which looked rebellious in its
emotion; and he believed it was the rebellion in her face which made him
realize how intensely she had been able to love her mother.

"Now I must write to Mrs. Chetwinde," she said, suddenly bending over
the notepaper, "and tell her we'll come, and I'll sing."

"Yes."

He stood a moment watching the moving pen. Then he bent down and just
touched her shoulder with a great gentleness.

"If you knew what I would do to keep every breath of sorrow out of your
life!" he said, in a low voice.

Without looking up she touched his hand.

"I know you would. You could never bring sorrow into my life."

From that day Dion realized what intensity of feeling lay beneath
Rosamund's serene and often actively joyous demeanor. Perhaps she cared
for very few people, but for those few she cared with a force surely
almost abnormal. Her mother had now been dead for many years; never
before had Rosamund spoken of her death to him. He understood the reason
of that silence now, and from that day the desire to keep all sorrow
from her became almost a passion in him. He even felt that its approach
to her, that its cold touch resting upon her, would be a hateful and
almost unnatural outrage. Yet he saw all around him people closely
companioned by sorrow and did not think that st