In thinking of Mrs. Clarke, Dion of course always considered her with the detached spectator’s mind.  No woman on earth was of real importance to him except Rosamund.  His mother he did not consciously count among women.  She was to him just the exceptional being, the unique and homely manifestation a devoted mother is to the son who loves her without thinking about it; not numbered among women or even among mothers.  She stood to him for protective love unquestioning, for interest in him and all his doings unwavering, for faith in his inner worth undying, for the Eternities without beginning or ending; but probably he did not know it.  Of Rosamund, what she was, what she meant in his life, he was intensely, even secretly, almost savagely conscious.  In Mrs. Clarke he was more interested than he happened to be in any of the women who dwelt in the great world of those whom he did not love and never could love.

Had the dinner-party he had just been to been arranged by Daventry in order that Rosamund and Mrs. Clarke might meet in a perfectly natural way?  If so, it must have been Daventry’s idea and not Mrs. Clarke’s.  Dion had a feeling that Daventry had been vexed by Rosamund’s defection.  He knew his friend very well.  It was not quite natural that Daventry had not mentioned Rosamund.  But why should Daventry strongly wish Mrs. Clarke and Rosamund to meet if Mrs. Clarke had not indicated a desire to know Rosamund?  Daventry was an enthusiastic adherent of Mrs. Clarke’s.  He had, Dion knew, a chivalrous feeling for her.  Having helped to win her case, any slight put upon her would be warmly resented by him.

Had Rosamund put upon her a slight?  Had she deliberately avoided the dinner?

Dion was on the point of getting into the spare-room bed when he asked himself that question.  As he pulled back the clothes he heard a dry little sound.  It was Robin’s cough.  He stole to the door and opened it.  As he did so he saw the tail of Rosamund’s dressing-gown disappearing over the threshold of the nursery.  The nursery door shut softly behind her, and Dion got into bed feeling heartily ashamed of his suspicion.  How low it was to search for hidden motives in such a woman as Rosamund.  He resolved never to do that again.  He lay in bed listening, but he did not hear Robin’s cough again, and he wondered if the child was already old enough to be what nurses call “artful,” whether he had made use of his little affliction to get hold of his providence in the night.

What a mystery was the relation of mother and little child!  He lay for a long while musing about it.  Why hadn’t he followed Rosamund over the threshold of the nursery just now?  The mystery had held him back.

Was it greater than the mystery of the relation of man to woman in a love such as his for Rosamund?  He considered it, but he was certain that he could not fathom it.  No man, he felt sure, knew or ever could know how a mother like Rosamund, that is an intensely maternal mother, regarded her child when he was little and dependent on her; how she loved him, what he meant to her.  And no doubt the gift of the mother to the child was subtly reciprocated by the child.  But just how?