Dion stood still for a moment on the threshold of the room after he had opened the door.

“How quiet you are in here!” he said.

“This little room is always quiet.”

“Yes, but to-night it’s like a room to which some one has just said ‘Hush!’”

He came in and shut the door quietly behind him.

“I’ve just a minute.”

He came up to the fire.

“And so you were looking at him, our Messenger with winged sandals.  Oh, Rosamund, how wonderful it was at Olympia!  I wonder whether you and I shall ever see the Hermes together again.  I suppose all the chances are against it.”

“I hope we shall.”

“Do you?  And yet—­I don’t know.  It would be terrible to see him together again—­if things were much altered; if, for instance, one was less happy and remembered——­”

He broke off, came to the settee at right angles to the fire on which she was sitting, and sat down beside her.  At this moment—­he did not know why—­the great and always growing love he had for her seemed to surge forward abruptly like a tidal wave, and he was conscious of sadness and almost of fear.  He looked at Rosamund as if he were just going to part from her, anxiously, and with a sort of greed of detail.

“Alone I would never go back to Elis,” he said.  “Never.  What a power things have if they are connected in our hearts with people.  It’s—­it’s awful.”

A clock chimed faintly.

“I must go.”

He got up and stood for a moment looking down at the dear head loved so much, at her brow.

“I don’t know why it is,” he said, “but this evening I hate leaving you.”

“But it’s only for a little while.”

There was a tap at the door.

“Ah! here’s my tray.”

The maid came in carrying a woman’s meal, and Dion’s strange moment was over.

When he got to Great Cumberland Place, Daventry, who was to make a fourth, had just arrived, and was taking off his coat in the hall.  He looked unusually excited, alert in an almost feverish way, which was surprising in him.

“I’m in a case,” he said, “a quite big case.  Bruce Evelin’s got it for me.  I’m going to be junior to Addington; Lewis & Lewis instruct me.  What d’you think of that?”

Dion clapped him on the shoulder.

“The way of salvation!”

“Where will it lead me?”

“To Salvation, of course.”

“I’ll walk home with you to-night, old Dion.  I must yap across the Park with you to Hyde Park Corner, and tell you all about the woman from Constantinople.”

They were going upstairs.

“The woman——?”

“My client, my client.  My dear boy, this is no ordinary case”—­he waved a small hand ceremoniously—­“it’s a cause celebre or I shouldn’t have bothered myself with it.”

Lurby opened the drawing-room door.

“How’s Rosamund?” was Beatrice’s first question to Dion, as they shook hands.