nscious of evasion. He got up to go away,
feeling disappointed.

"Then you advise me to do nothing?" he said.

"What about, my boy?"

"About Mrs. Clarke."

"What could you do?"

Dion was silent.

"I think it's better to let women settle these little things among
themselves. They have a deep and comprehensive understanding of trifles
which we mostly lack. How's Robin?"

Robin again! Was he always to be the buffer between 5 Little Market
Street and Mrs. Clarke?

"He's well and tremendously lively, and I honestly think he's growing
better looking."

"Dear little chap!" said Bruce Evelin, with a very great tenderness in
his voice. "Dion, we shall have to concentrate on Robin."

Dion looked at him with inquiry.

"Poor Beattie, I don't think she'll have a child."

"Beattie! Not ever?"

"I'm afraid not."

Dion was shocked and startled.

"But I haven't heard a word--" he began.

"No. Both Beattie and Guy feel it terribly. I had a talk with Beattie's
doctor to-day."

"How dreadful! I'm sorry. But----" He paused.

He didn't like to ask intimate questions about Beattie.

"I'm afraid it is so," said Bruce Evelin. "You must let us all have a
share in your Robin."

He spoke very quietly, but there was a very deep, even intense, feeling
in his voice.

"Poor Beattie!" Dion said.

And that, too, was an evasion.

He went away from Great Cumberland Place accompanied by a sense of
walking, not perhaps in darkness, but in a dimness which was not
delicately beautiful like the dimness of twilight, but was rather akin
to the semi-obscurity of fog.

Not a word more was said about Mrs. Clarke between Rosamund and Dion,
and the latter never let Mrs. Clarke know about the Turkish songs, never
fulfilled his undertaking to go and see Jimmy again. In a contest
he could only be on Rosamund's side. The whole matter seemed to him
unfortunate, even almost disagreeable, but, for him, there could be no
question as to whether he wished Rosamund's or Mrs. Clarke's will to
prevail. Whatever Rosamund's reason was for not choosing to be friends
with Mrs. Clark he knew it was not malicious or petty. Perhaps she
had made a mistake about Mrs. Clarke. If so it was certainly an honest
mistake. It was when he thought of his promise to Jimmy that he felt
most uncomfortable about Rosamund's never expressed decision. Jimmy had
a good memory. He would not forget. As to Mrs. Clarke, of course she now
fully understood that Mrs. Dion Leith