Very seldom she spoke to Dion about these excursions of hers.  There was something in her feeling for religion which loved reserve rather than expression; she who was so forthcoming in many moments of her life, who was genial and gay, who enjoyed laughter and was always at home with humanity, knew very well how to be silent.  There was a saying she cared for, “God speaks to man in the silence;” perhaps she felt there was a suspicion of irreverence in talking to any one, even to Dion, about her aspiration to God.  If, on his return home, he asked her how she had passed the day, she often said only, “I’ve been very happy.”  Then he said to himself, “What more can I want?  I’m able to make her happy.”

One windy evening in January, when an icy sleet was driving over the town, as he came into the little hall, he found Rosamund at the foot of the staircase, with a piece of mother’s work in her hand, about to go into the drawing-room which was on the ground floor of the house.

“Rose,” he said, looking down at the little white something she was holding, “do you think we shall both feel ever so much older in March?  It will be in March, won’t it?”

“I think so,” she answered, with a sort of deeply tranquil gravity.

“In March when we are parents?”

“Are you worrying about that?” she asked him, smiling now, but with, in her voice, a hint of reproach.

“Worrying—­no.  But do you?”

“Let us go into the drawing-room,” she said.

When they were there she answered him: 

“Absolutely different, but not necessarily older.  Feeling older must be very like feeling old, I think—­and I can’t imagine feeling old.”

“Because probably you never will.”

“Have you had tea, Dion?”

“Yes, at the Greville.  I promised I’d meet Guy there to-day.  He spoke about Beattie.”

“Yes?”

“Do you think Beattie would marry him if he asked her?”

“I don’t know.”

She sat down in the firelight near the hearth, and bent a little over her work on the tiny garment, which looked as if it were intended for the use of a fairy.  Dion looked at her head with its pale hair.  As he leaned forward he could see all the top of her head.  The firelight made some of her hair look quite golden, gave a sort of soft sparkle to the curve of it about her broad, pure forehead.

“Guy’s getting desperate,” he said.  “But he’s afraid to put his fortune to the test.  He thinks even uncertainty is better than knowledge of the worst.”

“Of one thing I’m certain, Dion.  Beattie doesn’t love Guy Daventry.”

“Oh well, then, it’s all up.”

Rosamund looked up from the little garment.

“I didn’t say that.”

“But if Beattie—­but Beattie’s the soul of sincerity.”

“Yes, I know; but I think she might consent to marry Guy Daventry.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know exactly.  She never told me.  I just feel it.”