Like most people in perfect health Rosamund slept well; but that night she lay awake.  She did not want to sleep.  She had something to decide, something of vital importance to her.  Two courses lay open to her.  She might marry Dion Leith, or she might resolve never to marry.  Like most girls she had had dreams, but unlike most girls, she had often dreamed of a life in which men had no place.  She had recently entered upon the career of a public singer, not because she was obliged to earn money but because she had a fine voice and a strong temperament, and longed for self-expression.  But she had always believed that her public career would be a short one.  She loved fine music and enjoyed bringing its message home to people, but she had little or no personal vanity, and the life of a public performer entailed a great deal which she already found herself disliking.  Recently, too, her successful career had received a slight check.  She had made her festival debut at Burstal in “Elijah,” and no engagements for oratorio had followed upon it.  Some day, while she was still young, she meant to retire, and then——­

If she married Dion Leith she would have to give up an old dream.  On the other hand, if she married him, perhaps some day she would be a mother.  She felt certain—­she did not know why—­that if she did not marry Dion Leith she would never marry at all.

She thought, she prayed, she thought again.  Sometimes in the dark hours of that night the memory of her sensation of loneliness in the fog returned to her.  Sometimes Mr. Robertson’s “Which can I share?” echoed within her, in the resonant chamber of her soul.  He had been very quiet, but he had made an enormous impression upon her; he had made her hate egoism much more than she had hated it hitherto.

Even into the innermost sanctuary of religion egoism can perhaps find a way.  The thought of that troubled Rosamund in the dark.  But when the hour of dawn grew near she fell asleep.  She had made up her mind, or, rather, it had surely been made up for her.  For a conviction had come upon her that for good or for evil it was meant that her life should be linked with Dion Leith’s.  He possessed something which she valued highly, and which, she thought, was possessed by very few men.  He offered it to her.  If she refused it, such an offering would probably never be made to her again.

To be a lonely woman; to be a subtle and profound egoist; to be loved, cherished, worshiped; to be a mother.

Many lives of women seemed to float before her eyes.

Just before she lost consciousness it seemed to her, for a moment, that she was looking into the pathetic eyes of the old man whom she had met in the fog.

“Poor old man!” she murmured.

She slept.

On the following morning she sent this note to Dion Leith: 

“My dear Dion,—­I will marry you.

“Rosamund.”