In the Wilderness | Page 4

shaking her head. No more "Paradiso," and
she loved it so! A moment before she had been far away.
The book was lying open on the arm-chair in which she had been
sitting. She went to close it and put it on a table. For an instant she
looked down on the page, and immediately her dream returned. Then
Lurby's dry, soft voice said behind her:
"Mr. Leith, ma'am."
"Oh!" She turned, leaving the book.
Directly she looked at Dion Leith she knew why he had come.
"I'm all alone," Rosamund said. "I stayed here, instead of going to
Sherrington with Beattie and my guardian, because I wanted to hear a
sermon this evening. Come and sit down by the fire."
"What church are you going to?"
"St. Mary's, Welby Street."
"Shall I go with you?"
Rosamund had taken up the "Paradiso" and was shutting it.
"I think I'll go alone," she said gently but quite firmly.
"What are you reading?"
"Dante's 'Paradiso.'"
She put the book down on a table at her elbow.
"I don't believe you meant me to be let in," he said bluntly.
"I didn't know it was you. How could I know?"
"And if you had known?"

She hesitated. His brows contracted till he looked almost fierce.
"I'm not sure. Honestly I'm not sure. I've been quite alone since Friday,
when they went. And I'd got it into my head that I wasn't going to see
any one till to-morrow, except, of course, at the church."
Dion felt chilled almost to the bone.
"I can't understand," he almost burst out, in an uncontrolled way that
surprised himself. "Are you completely self-sufficing then? But it isn't
natural. Could you live alone?"
"I didn't say that."
She looked at him steadily and calmly, without a hint of anger.
"But could you?"
"I don't know. Probably not. I've never tried."
"But you don't hate the idea?"
His voice was almost violent.
"No; if--if I were living in a certain way."
"What way?"
But she did not answer his question.
"I dare say I might dislike living alone. I've never done such a thing,
therefore I can't tell."
"You're an enigma," he exclaimed. "And you seem so--so--you have
this extraordinary, this abnormal power of attracting people to you.
You are friends with everybody."
"Indeed I'm not."

"I mean you're so cordial, so friendly with everybody. Don't you care
for anybody?"
"I care very much for some people."
"And yet you could live alone! Shut in here for days with a book"--at
that moment he was positively jealous of old Dante, gone to his rest
five hundred and seventy-four years ago--"you're perfectly happy."
"The 'Paradiso' isn't an ordinary book," she said, very gently, and
looking at him with a kind, almost beaming expression in her yellow-
brown eyes.
"I don't believe you ever read an ordinary book."
"I like to feed on fine things. I'm half afraid of the second-rate."
"I love you for that. Oh, Rosamund, I love you for so many things!"
He got up and stood by the fire, turning his back to her for a moment.
When he swung round his face was earnest but he looked calmer. She
saw that he was making a strong effort to hold himself in, that he was
reaching out after self-control.
"I can't tell you all the things I love you for," he said, "but your
independence of spirit frightens me. From the very first, from that
evening when I saw you in the omnibus at the Milan Station over a year
ago, I felt your independence."
"Did I manifest it in the omnibus to poor Beattie and my guardian?" she
asked, smiling, and in a lighter tone.
"I don't know," he said gravely. "But when I saw you the same evening
walking with your sister in the public garden I felt it more strongly.
Even the way you held your head and moved--you reminded me of the
maidens of the Porch on the Acropolis. I connected you with Greece
and all my--my dreams of Greece."
"Perhaps if you hadn't just come from Greece--"

"Wasn't it strange," he said, interrupting her but quite unconscious that
he did so, "that almost the first words I heard you speak were about
Greece? You were telling your sister abut the Greek divers who come
to Portofino to find coral under the sea. I was sitting alone in the garden,
and you passed and I heard just a few words. They made me think of
the first Greek Island I ever saw, rising out of the sunset as I voyaged
from Constantinople to the Piraeus. It was wonderfully beautiful and
wonderfully calm. It was like a herald of all the beauty and purity I
found in Greece. It was--like you."
"How you hated Constantinople!" she said.