“Auntie’s putty good at bricks.”
“Did you meet Beattie, Dion?” asked Rosamund.
“On the doorstep.”
He thought of Beattie’s question. There was no question in Rosamund’s face. But perhaps his own face had changed.
A tap came to the door.
“Master Robin?” said nurse, in a voice that held both inquiry and an admonishing sound.
When Robin had gone off to bed, walking vaguely and full of the forerunners of dreams, Dion knew that his hour had come. He felt a sort of great stillness within him, stillness of presage, perhaps, or of mere concentration, of the will to be, to do, to endure, whatever came. Rosamund shut down the lid of the piano and came away from the music-stool. Dion looked at her, and thought of the maidens of the porch and of the columns of the Parthenon.
“Rosamund,” he said,—that stillness within him forbade any preparation, any “leading up,”—“I’ve joined the City Imperial Volunteers.”
“The City Imperial Volunteers?” she said.
He knew by the sound of her voice that she had not grasped the meaning of what he had done. She looked surprised, and a question was in her brown eyes.