‘If the child had lived!’ she uttered. ‘If we had her now, nearly the age of Rahnee, my heart would not be so athirst for love. It would come to me naturally. Just as I am, no cleverer, or brighter, or more original, you might find my company sufficient, if we had the child.’ ‘We cannot cut out our lives by our own pattern,’ said Gaston, with irrefragable philosophy. ‘The disappointment, God knows, was bitterly keen to both of us at the time. Looking round the world now, I am disposed to wonder sometimes if the possession of a child be an unmixed blessing.’ ‘It would have been so to me.’ The wound had never so thoroughly healed that Dinah could bear a careless touch on the cicatrice. ‘But I have no right to complain,’--she said this through her tears,--‘God gave, and took away. Who am I to question His wisdom?’ During several seconds Mr. Arbuthnot seemed to grow more and more absorbed in the contemplation of his ring; then, by an alert side movement, he contrived to reach the door of his dressing-room. ‘You are going? You intend really to dine with the Thornes this evening?’ Dinah brushed her hand hastily across her eyes. ‘Certainly, I intend to keep my engagement,’ answered Gaston Arbuthnot. ‘You would not break it, if I asked you?’ ‘I would do any conceivable thing you asked me--with sufficient cause. I have too much opinion of your good taste to dread your ever placing yourself, or me, in a ridiculous position.’ ‘If you would, I should give up all this plan for Wednesday. We would go back’--a soft far-off look stole over Dinah’s face as though for a moment she indulged in the retrospect of some too-dear dream--‘go back--ah! fool that I am--to the early days--days when you said the best dinner-party in London could not tempt you to leave me for an evening.’ While she was speaking she had followed him. Her hand rested on his sleeve. Her eyes, with piteous, imploring earnestness, sought to read his face. ‘There is no returning to old days,’ said Gaston Arbuthnot. ‘People of our age should have sense enough to realise this. The exclusive boy-and-girl idolatry of one year of life would be rank absurdity in a dignified Darby and Joan of our standing.’ Dinah shrank away from him. Perhaps it occurred to her that exclusive idolatry had never existed at all on Gaston’s side. How long, in truth, did he keep to the declaration, made in his honeymoon, of preferring quiet evenings with her to the best dinner-parties in London? ‘When I came in just now, Dinah, I interrupted you at some spiritual exercise, not high enough to be called prayer, yet that required a kneeling attitude. It is a pity,’ said Mr. Arbuthnot, looking disagreeable, ‘that the self-communings of good people so seldom lead them to charity--I don’t mean almsgiving--I mean a broader, more charitable frame of mind. If you could only recognise one fact, that there is a great variety of human nature about you in the world, it would be something gained.’