g. "Let us be true to our Greek ideal."

She seemed to be in fun, but he detected firmness of purpose behind the
fun.

"What shall I say to Mrs. Clarke?" he asked.

"I should just leave it. Perhaps she'll forget all about it."

Dion was quite sure that wouldn't happen, but he left it. Rosamund had
determined not to allow Mrs. Clarke to be friends with her. He wished
very much it were otherwise, not because he really cared for Mrs.
Clarke, but because he liked her and Jimmy, and because he hated the
idea of hurting the feelings of a woman in Mrs. Clarke's rather unusual
situation. He might, of course, have put his point of view plainly to
Rosamund at once. Out of delicacy he did not do this. His great love for
Rosamund made him instinctively very delicate in all his dealings with
her; it told him that Rosamund did not wish to discuss her reasons for
desiring to avoid Mrs. Clarke. She had had them, he believed, before
Mrs. Clarke and she had met. That meeting evidently had not lessened
their force. He supposed, therefore, that she had disliked Mrs. Clarke.
He wondered why, and tried to consider Mrs. Clarke anew. She was
certainly not a disagreeable woman. She was very intelligent,
thoroughbred, beautiful in a peculiar way,--even Rosamund thought
that,--ready to make herself pleasant, quite free from feminine malice,
absolutely natural, interested in all the really interesting things.
Beattie liked her; Daventry rejoiced in her; Mrs. Chetwinde was her
intimate friend; Esme Darlington had even made sacrifices for her; Bruce
Evelin----

There Dion's thought was held up, like a stream that encounters a
barrier. What did Bruce Evelin think of Mrs. Clarke? He had not gone
to the trial. But since he had retired from practise at the Bar he had
never gone into court. Dion had often heard him say he had had enough
of the Law Courts. There was no reason why he should have been drawn
to them for Mrs. Clarke's sake, or even for Daventry's. But what did he
think of Mrs. Clarke? Dion resolved to tell him of the rather awkward
situation which had come about through his own intimacy--it really
amounted to that--with Mrs. Clarke, and Rosamund's evident resolve to
have nothing to do with her.

One day Dion went to Great Cumberland Place and told Bruce Evelin all
the facts, exactly what Mrs. Clarke had said and done, exactly what
Rosamund had said and done. As he spoke it seemed to him that he was
describing a sort of contest, shadowy