In the midst of many friends, in the midst of the enormous City, Rosamund effected, or began to effect, a curiously intent withdrawal, and Dion, as it were, accompanied her; or perhaps it were truer to say, followed after her.  He loved quiet evenings in his home, and the love of them grew steadily upon him.  To the occasional protests of his friends he laughingly replied: 

“The fact is we’re both very happy at home.  We’re an unfashionable couple.”

Bruce Evelin, Esme Darlington and a few others, including, of course, Dion’s mother and the Daventrys, they sometimes asked to come to them.  Their little dinners were homely and delightful; but Mr. Darlington often regretted plaintively their “really, if I may say so, almost too definite domesticity.”  He even said to certain intimates: 

“I know the next thing we shall hear of will be that the Leiths have decided to bury themselves in the country.  And Dion Leith will wreck his nerves by daily journeys to town in some horrid business train.”

At the beginning of January, however, there came an invitation which they decided to accept.  It was to an evening party at Mrs. Chetwinde’s, and she begged Rosamund to be nice to her and sing at it.

“Since you’ve given up singing professionally one never hears you at all,” she wrote.  “I’m not going to tell the usual lie and say I’m only having a few people.  On the contrary, I’m asking as many as my house will hold.  It’s on January the fifteenth.”

It happened that the invitation arrived in Little Market Street by the last post, and that, earlier in the day, Daventry had met Dion in the Club and had casually told him that Mrs. 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.”

His manner was urgent.  Mrs. Clarke would be in Paris.  This party was certainly no ingenuity of Daventry’s.

“We mustn’t begin to live like a monk and a nun,” he exclaimed.  “We’re too young and enjoy life too much for that.”

“Do monks and nuns live together?  Since when?” said Rosamund, laughing at him.

“Poor wretches!  If only they did, how much—!”

“Hush!” she said, with a smiling pretense of thinking of being shocked presently.

She went to the writing-table.

“Very well, then, we’ll go if you want to.”

“Don’t you?” he asked, following her.

She had sat down and taken up a pen.  Now she looked up at him with her steady eyes.

“I’m sure I shall enjoy it when I’m there,” she answered.  “I generally enjoy things.  You know that.  You’ve seen me among people so often.”