“Jimmy’s quite mad about you.”

“Still?” he blurted out, and was instantly conscious of a false step.

“He’s got an extraordinary memory for a biceps, and then Jenkins talks about you to him.”

As they went on talking people began coming up from the black-and-white dining-room.  Dion said he would come to see Jimmy again, would visit the gymnasium in the Harrow Road one day when Jimmy was taking his lesson.  Did Jimmy ever go on a Saturday?  Yes, he was going next Saturday at four.  Dion would look in next Saturday.  Now Mrs. Clarke and Rosamund had met, and Mrs. Clarke evidently admired Rosamund in two ways, Dion felt quite different about his acquaintance with her.  If it had already been agreed that Mrs. Clarke should show Rosamund Turkish songs, there was no need for further holding back.  The relief which had come to him made Dion realize how very uncomfortable he had been about Mrs. Clarke in the immediate past.  He was now thoroughly and cordially at his ease with her.  They talked till the big drawing-room was full again, till Rosamund reappeared in the midst of delightful friends; talked of Jimmy’s future, of the new tutor who must be found,—­a real man, not a mere bloodless intellectual,—­and, again, of Constantinople, to which Mrs. Clarke would return in April, against the advice of her friends, and in spite of Esme Darlington’s almost frantic protests, “because I love it, and because I don’t choose to be driven out of any place by liars.”  Her last remark to him, and he thought it very characteristic of her, was this: 

“Liberty’s worth bitterness.  I would buy it at the price of all the tears in my body.”

It was, perhaps, also very characteristic that she made the statement with a perfectly quiet gravity which almost concealed the evidently tough inflexibility beneath.

And then, when people were ready to go, Rosamund sung Brahm’s “Wiegenlied.”

Dion stood beside Bruce Evelin while Rosamund was singing this.  She sang it with a new and wonderful tenderness which had come to her with Robin, and in her face, as she sang, there was a new and wonderful tenderness.  The meaning of Robin in Rosamund’s life was expressed to Dion by Rosamund in this song as it had never been expressed before.  Perhaps it was expressed also to Bruce Evelin, for Dion saw tears in his eyes almost brimming over, and his face was contracted, as if only by a strong, even a violent, effort he was able to preserve his self-control.

As people began to go away Dion found himself close to Esme Darlington.

“My dear fellow,” said Mr. Darlington, with unusual abandon, “Rosamund has made a really marvelous advance—­marvelous.  In that ‘Wiegenlied’ she reached high-water mark.  No one could have sung it more perfectly.  What has happened to her?”

“Robin,” said Dion, looking him full in the face, and speaking with almost stern conviction.

“Robin?” said Mr. Darlington, with lifted eyebrows.