In the Wilderness | Page 9

way. It's ever so late."
"I got lost in the fog. That dear old man rescued me."
"I'm very thankful, miss, I'm sure."
The girl seemed stiffened with astonishment. She shut the street door
automatically.
"He used to be a chemist once."
"Did he, miss?"
"Yes, quite a successful one too; just off Hanover Square, he told me.
He was going round to get something for his supper when we met."
"Indeed, miss?"
Rosamund went upstairs.
"Yes, poor old man," she said, as she ascended.
Like most people in perfect health Rosamund slept well; but that night
she lay awake. She did not want to sleep. She had something to decide,
something of vital importance to her. Two courses lay open to her. She
might marry Dion Leith, or she might resolve never to marry. Like
most girls she had had dreams, but unlike most girls, she had often
dreamed of a life in which men had no place. She had recently entered
upon the career of a public singer, not because she was obliged to earn
money but because she had a fine voice and a strong temperament, and
longed for self-expression. But she had always believed that her public
career would be a short one. She loved fine music and enjoyed bringing
its message home to people, but she had little or no personal vanity,
and the life of a public performer entailed a great deal which she

already found herself disliking. Recently, too, her successful career had
received a slight check. She had made her festival debut at Burstal in
"Elijah," and no engagements for oratorio had followed upon it. Some
day, while she was still young, she meant to retire, and then----
If she married Dion Leith she would have to give up an old dream. On
the other hand, if she married him, perhaps some day she would be a
mother. She felt certain--she did not know why--that if she did not
marry Dion Leith she would never marry at all.
She thought, she prayed, she thought again. Sometimes in the dark
hours of that night the memory of her sensation of loneliness in the fog
returned to her. Sometimes Mr. Robertson's "Which can I share?"
echoed within her, in the resonant chamber of her soul. He had been
very quiet, but he had made an enormous impression upon her; he had
made her hate egoism much more than she had hated it hitherto.
Even into the innermost sanctuary of religion egoism can perhaps find
a way. The thought of that troubled Rosamund in the dark. But when
the hour of dawn grew near she fell asleep. She had made up her mind,
or, rather, it had surely been made up for her. For a conviction had
come upon her that for good or for evil it was meant that her life should
be linked with Dion Leith's. He possessed something which she valued
highly, and which, she thought, was possessed by very few men. He
offered it to her. If she refused it, such an offering would probably
never be made to her again.
To be a lonely woman; to be a subtle and profound egoist; to be loved,
cherished, worshiped; to be a mother.
Many lives of women seemed to float before her eyes.
Just before she lost consciousness it seemed to her, for a moment, that
she was looking into the pathetic eyes of the old man whom she had
met in the fog.
"Poor old man!" she murmured.

She slept.
On the following morning she sent this note to Dion Leith:
"MY DEAR DION,--I will marry you. "ROSAMUND."

CHAPTER III
In the following spring, Rosamund and Dion were married, and Dion
took Rosamund "to the land of the early morning."
They arrived in Greece at the beginning of May, when the rains were
over and the heats of summer were at hand. The bed of Ilissus was
empty. Dust lay white in the streets of Athens and along the road to
Phaleron and the sea. The low-lying tracts of country were desert-dry,
and about Athens the world was arrayed in the garb of the East.
Nevertheless there was still a delicate freshness in the winds that blew
to the little city from the purple Aegean or from the mountains of
Argolis; stirring the dust into spiral dances among the pale houses upon
which Lycabettos looks down; shaking the tiny leaves of the tressy
pepper trees near the Royal Palace; whispering the antique secrets of
the ages into the ears of the maidens who, unwearied and happily
submissive, bear up the Porch of the Erechtheion; stealing across the
vast spaces and between the mighty columns of the Parthenon. The
dawns and the twilights had not lost the pure savor of their almost frail