The truth of the whole matter lay in this:  that whereas once God had seemed to stand between Rosamund and Dion, now Dion seemed to stand between Rosamund and God.

But even Father Robertson did not know this.

Presently the door opened and the Father came in.

Instantly Rosamund noticed that he looked slightly ill at ease, almost, indeed, embarrassed.  He shook hands with her in his gentle way and made a few ordinary remarks about little matters in which they were mutually interested.  Then he asked her to sit down, sat down near her and was silent.

“What is it?” she said, at last.

He looked at her, and there was something almost piercing in his eyes which she had never noticed in them before.

“Last night,” he said, “when I came home I found here a note from a stranger, asking me to visit her at the Adelphi Hotel where she was staying.  She wrote that she had come to Liverpool on purpose to see me.  I went to the hotel and had an interview with her.  This interview concerned you.”

“Concerned me?” said Rosamund.

Her voice did not sound as if she were actively surprised.  There was a lack of tone in it.  It sounded, indeed, almost dry.

“Yes.  Did you ever hear of Lady Ingleton?”

After an instant of consideration Rosamund said: 

“Yes.  I believe I met her somewhere once.  Isn’t she married to an ambassador?”

“To our Ambassador at Constantinople.”

“I think I sang once at some house where she was, in the days when I used to sing.”

“She has heard you sing.”

“That was it then.  But what can she want with me?”

“Your husband is in Constantinople.  She knows him there.”

Rosamund flushed to the roots of her yellow hair.  When he saw that painful wave of red go over her face Father Robertson looked away.  All the delicacy in him felt the agony of her outraged reserve.  Her body had stiffened.

“I must speak about this,” he said.  “Forgive me if you can.  But even if you cannot, I must speak.”

She looked down.  Her face was still burning.

“You have let me know a great deal about yourself,” he went on.  “That fact doesn’t give me any right to be curious.  On the contrary!  But I think, perhaps, your confidence has given me a right to try to help you spiritually even at the cost of giving you great mental pain.  For a long time I have felt that perhaps in my relation to you I have been morally a coward.”

Rosamund looked up.

“You could never be a coward,” she said.

“You don’t know that.  Nobody knows that, perhaps, except myself.  However that may be, I must not play the coward now.  Lady Ingleton met your husband in Turkey.  She brings very painful news of him.”

Rosamund clasped her hands together and let them lie on her knees.  She was looking steadily at Father Robertson.