he had gained enormously by the possession of her.  He knew what woman can be, and without disappointment; for he did not choose to reckon up those small, almost impalpable things which, like passing shadows, had now and then brought a faint obscurity into his life with Rosamund, as disappointments.  They came, perhaps, from himself.  And what where they?  He looked out over the long stretch of unruffled water, filmed over with ice near the shores, and saw a tiny dark object traveling through it with self-possession and an air of purpose beneath the constellations; some aquatic bird up to something, heedless of the approaching midnight and the Great Bear.

“Look at that little beggar!” said Daventry.  “And we don’t know so very much more about it all than he does.  I expect he’s a Muscovy duck, or drake, if you’re a pedant about genders.”

“He’s evidently full of purpose.”

“Out in the middle of the ice-cold Serpentine.  He’s only a speck now, like our world in space.  Now I can’t see him.”

“I can.”

“You’re longer-sighted than I am.  But, Dion, I’m seeing a longish way to-night, farther than I’ve seen before.  Love’s a great business, the greatest business in life.  Ambition, and greed, and vanity, and altruism, and even fanaticism, must give place when it’s on hand, when it harnesses its winged horses to a man’s car and swings him away to the stars.”

“Ask her.  I think she’ll have you.”

A star fell through the frosty clear sky.  Dion remembered the falling star above Drouva.  This time he was swift with a wish, but it was not a wish for his friend.

They reached Hyde Park Corner just before midnight and parted there.  Dion hailed a hansom, but Daventry declared with determination that he was going to walk all the way home to Phillimore Gardens.

“To get up my case, to arrange things mentally,” he explained.  “Big brains always work best at night.  All the great lawyers toil when the stars are out.  Why should I be an exception?  I dedicate myself to Cynthia Clarke.  She will have my undivided attention and all my deepest solicitude.”

“I know why.”

“No, no.”

He put one hand on the apron which Dion had already closed.

“No, really, you’re wrong.  I am deeply interested in Mrs. Clarke because she is what she is.  I want her to win because I’m convinced she’s innocent.  Will you come to Mrs. Chetwinde’s next Sunday and meet her?”

“Yes, unless Rosamund wants me.”

“That’s always understood.”

The cab drove away, and the great lawyer was left to think of his case under the stars.

When the cab turned the corner of Great Market Street, Westminster, and came into Little Market Street, Dion saw in the distance before him two large, staring yellow eyes, which seemed to be steadily regarding him like the eyes of something on the watch.  They were the lamps of a brougham drawn up in front of No. 5.  Dion’s cabman, perforce, pulled up short before the brown door of No. 4.