thinking, too:  “We’ve lost the power to follow that recipe, if we ever had it.”  Poor women!  With a sort of exultation he pitied them and their husbands.  A chord was sounded on the piano.  He stood still.  The loud buzz of conversation died down.  Was Rosamund going to sing again so soon?  Perhaps some one had begged for something specially beloved.  Jennie was playing a soft prelude as a gentle warning to a few of those who seem ever to find silence a physical difficulty.  She stopped, and began to play something Dion did not know, something very modern in its strange atmospheric delicacy, which nevertheless instantly transported him to Greece.  He was there, even before Rosamund began to sing in a voice that was hushed, in a far-off voice, not antique, but the voice of modernity, prompted by a mind looking away from what is near to what is afar and is deeply desired.

     “A crescent sail upon the sea,
     So calm and fair and ripple-free
     You wonder storms can ever be;

     A shore with deep indented bays,
     And o’er the gleaming water-ways
     A glimpse of Islands in the haze;

     A faced bronzed dark to red and gold,
     With mountain eyes that seem to hold
     The freshness of the world of old;

A shepherd’s crook, a coat of fleece,
A grazing flock—­the sense of peace,
The long sweet silence—­this is Greece.”

The accompaniment continued for a moment alone, whispering remoteness.  Then, like a voice far off in a blue distance, there came again from Rosamund, more softly and with less pressure: 

“——­The sense of peace,
The long sweet silence—­this is Greece! 
This is Greece!”

It was just then that Dion saw Mrs. Clarke.  She had, perhaps, been sitting down; or, possibly, some one had been standing in front of her and had hidden her from him; for she was not far off, and he wondered sharply why he had not seen her till now, why, till now, she had refrained from snatching him away from his land of the early morning.  There was to him at this moment something actually cruel and painful in her instant suggestion of Stamboul.  Yet she was not looking at him, but was directing upon Rosamund her characteristic gaze of consideration, in which there was a peculiar grave thoroughness.  A handsome, fair young man, with a very red weak mouth, stood close to her.  Echo was just beyond.  Without speaking, Mrs. Clarke continued looking at Rosamund intently, when the music evaporated, and Greece faded away into the shining of that distance which hides our dreams.  And Dion noted again, with a faint creeping of wonder and of doubt, the strange haggardness of her face, which, nevertheless, he had come to think almost beautiful.