“I cannot pray—­I won’t pray,” she whispered.

And she turned away, put out the light and got into bed.

That Dion should have done that, should have been able to do that!

And she remembered what it was she had first loved in Dion, the thing which had made him different from other men; she remembered the days and the nights in Greece.  She saw two lovers in a morning land descending the path from the hill of Drouva, going down into the green recesses of quiet Elis.  She saw Hermes and the child.

All that night she lay awake.  In the morning she sent the note to Father
Robertson.

She could not see Lady Ingleton and yet she dreaded her departure.  She wanted to know more, much more.  A gnawing hunger of curiosity assailed her.  This woman had been with Dion—­since.  This woman knew of his infidelity; yet she affirmed his love for his wife.  But the one knowledge surely gave the lie to the other.

Why did she care?  Why did she care so much?  Rosamund asked herself the question almost with terror.

She found no answer.

But she could not pray.  Whenever she tried to pray Mrs. Clarke came before her, and a man—­could it be Dion?—­stamped with the hideous imprint of physical lust.

* * * * *

Father Robertson was startled by the change in Rosamund’s appearance when she visited him two days after she had sent him the note.  She looked physically ill.  Her color had gone.  Her eyes were feverish and sunken, and the skin beneath them was stained with that darkness which betokens nights without sleep.  Her lips and hands twitched with a nervousness that was painful.  But that which distressed him more than any other thing was the expression in her face—­the look of shame and of self-consciousness which altered her almost horribly.  Even in her most frantic moments of grief for Robin there had always been something of directness, of fearlessness, in her beauty.  Now something furtive literally disfigured her, and she seemed trying to cover it with a dogged obstinacy which suggested a will stretched to the uttermost, vibrating like a string in danger of snapping.

“Has Lady Ingleton gone?” she asked, directly she was inside the room.

“No, not yet.  You remember I wrote to you that she would stay on for a few days.”

“But she might have gone unexpectedly.”

“She is still here.”

“I believe I shall have to see her,” Rosamund said, with a sort of hard abruptness and determination.

“Go to see her,” said Father Robertson firmly.  “Perhaps she was sent here.”

“Sent here?” said Rosamund, with a sharpness of sudden suspicion.

“Oh, my child,”—­he put his hand on her arm, and made her sit down,—­“not by a human being.”

Rosamund looked down and was silent.

“Before you go, if you are going,” Father Robertson continued, sitting down by the deal table on which he wrote his letters, “I must do what I ought to have done long ago; I must speak to you about your husband.”