CHAPTER VIII

On January the fifteenth Rosamund put on the gown which had been bought for the Carlton dinner but not worn at it.

Although she had not really wanted to go to Mrs. Chetwinde’s party she looked radiantly buoyant, and like one almost shining with expectation, when she was ready to start for Lowndes Square.

“You ought to go out every night,” Dion said, as he put her cloak over her shoulders.

“Why?”

“To enjoy and to give enjoyment.  Merely to look at you would make the dullest set of people in London wake up and scintillate.  Don’t tell me you’re not looking forward to it, because I couldn’t believe you.”

“Now that the war-paint is on I confess to feeling almost eager for the fray.  How nicely you button it.  You aren’t clumsy.”

“How could I be clumsy in doing something for you?  Where’s your music?”

“In my head.  Jennie will meet us there.”

Jennie was Rosamund’s accompanist, a clever Irish girl who often came to Little Market Street to go through things with Rosamund.

“It will be rather delightful singing to people again,” she added in a joyous voice as they got into the hired carriage.  “I hope I’ve really improved.”

“How you love a thing for itself!” he said, as they drove off.

“I think that’s the only way to love.”

“Of course it is.  You know the only way to everything beautiful and sane.  What I have learnt from you!”

“Dion,” she said, in the darkness, “I think you are rather a dangerous companion for me.”

“How can I be?”

“I’m not at all a piece of perfection.  Take care you don’t teach me to think I am.”

“But you’re the least conceited—­”

“Hush, you encourager of egoism!” she interrupted seriously.

“I’m afraid you’ll find a good many more at Mrs. Chetwinde’s.”

Dion thought he had been a true prophet half an hour later when, from a little distance, he watched and listened while Rosamund was singing her first song.  Seeing her thus in the midst of a crowd he awakened to the fact that Robin had changed her very much.  She still looked splendidly young but she no longer looked like a girl.  The married woman and the mother were there quite definitely.  Even he fancied that he heard them in her voice, which had gained in some way, perhaps in roundness, in mellowness.  This might be the result of study; he was inclined to believe it the result of motherhood.  She was wearing ear-rings—­tiny, not long drooping things, they were green, small emeralds; and he remembered how he had loved her better when he saw her wearing ear-rings for the first time in Mr. Darlington’s drawing-room.  How definite she was in a crowd.  Crowds effaced ordinary people, but when Rosamund was surrounded she always seemed to be beautifully emphasized, to be made more perfectly herself.  She did not take, she gave, and in giving showed how much she had.