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Daventry, she's a quite honest stupid woman. She honestly thinks that I'm a horrible creature." And Mrs. Clarke began to bite the crisp toast with her lovely teeth. Mrs. Chetwinde's eyes dwelt on her for a brief instant with, Dion thought, a rather peculiar look which he could not quite understand. It had, perhaps, a hint of hardness, or of cold admiration, something of that kind, in it.
As she spoke, Lydia drew her skirt shorter through her girdle and started for the hearth-fire in the room beyond. "Shoo," she cried to the hens, which had followed the children into the house and were searching hopefully for something to eat among the ashes, "you'll burn your toes as like as not! Begone, unless you want to be put at once into the pot! Go for them, Argos! Dion, you feed them.
And fire, which beautifies, or makes romantic and sad everything gave to Beatrice the look of his mother. For a moment his soul was full of questions about the two women. "I've joined the Artists' Rifles," Dion said to Rosamund one day. He spoke almost bruskly. Of late he had begun to develop a manner which had just a hint of roughness in it sometimes.
Swiftly she began to dwell upon all the dear goodness of Dion, upon his love, his admiration, his perpetual thoughtfulness, his unselfishness, his straight purity, his chivalry, his unceasing devotion. He was a man to trust implicitly. That was enough. She trusted him and loved him. She thanked God that he was back in England.
Already England was rousing herself to welcome her returning sons, bruskly but lustily, in her way, which was not South Africa's way. Dion loved that gale though it kept him awake all night. Next morning they were off the Start, and heard the voices of the sirens bidding them good day. On the last day of October, at about four o'clock in the afternoon, Rosamund was waiting for Dion.
The conversation with his friend was not a long one, for Dion had promised Barine and her mother to accompany them to the country. Notwithstanding the betrothal, they were to start that very day; for Caesarion had called upon Barine twice that morning. She had not received him, but the unfortunate youth's conduct induced her to hasten the preparations for her departure.
The life of the body seemed to him just then an antagonist to the life of the soul. "I'm on the lower plane," said Dion to himself that evening. "If it's a boy, I shall have to look after his body; she'll take care of the rest. Perhaps mothers always do, but not as she could and will."
Clarke was spending the whole of January in Paris, to get some things for the flat in Constantinople which she intended to occupy in the late spring. Rosamund showed Dion Mrs. Chetwinde's note. "Let's go," he said at once. "Shall we? Do you like these crowds? She says 'as many as my house will hold." "All the better. There'll be all the more to enjoy the result of your practising. Do say yes."
Their brown feet stirred up the dust and set it dancing in the sunshine, a symbol surely of their wayward, unfettered spirits. A little way off, on a slope among the trees, their dark tents could be partially seen. "Lucky beggars!" murmured Dion, as he threw them a few small coins, while Rosamund smiled at them and waved her hand in answer to their greetings.
Clarke had apparently not known that Rosamund had been expected at the dinner, for when Dion, who had sat next her, had said something about the unfortunate reason for Rosamund's absence, Mrs. Clarke had seemed sincerely surprised. "But I thought your wife had quite given up going out since her child was born?" she had said. "Oh no. She goes out sometimes." "I had no idea she did.
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