$q resolve function not triggering then

I thought I was using the AngularJS $q interface correctly. But the function I'm passing to the then callback is never being executed. And I am calling resolve in the function which is wrapped by $q. I've verified that resolve() is being called, yet it seems this is not the same function which is chained with .then():

$q(function(resolve, reject) {
  resolve();
  reject();
  console.log("This happens");  //This shows that resolve() is being called
}).then(function() {
  console.log("This doesn't");  //Yet this never gets executed
}).catch(function() {
  console.log("This also doesn't happen");
});

The output is:

This happens

What am I doing wrong?

My environment is a KarmaJS unit test with mocha and sinon-chai.