He had surely failed in a great enterprise, but he was resolved to succeed if long enough life were given to him. He was now awake and walked in full knowledge. Surely, Rosamund being what she was, the issue lay with himself. If God had stood between them that must be because he, Dion, was not yet worthy of the full happiness which was his greatest earthly desire. Dion was certain that God did not stand between Rosamund and Robin.

He had dreams of returning to England a different, or perhaps a developed, man. The perfect lovers ought to stand together on the same level. Rosamund and he had never done that yet. He resolved to gain in South Africa, to get a grip on his best possibilities, to go back to England, if he ever went back, a bigger soul, freer, more competent, more generous, more fearless. He could never be a mystic. He did not want to be that. But surely he could learn in this interval of separation which, like a river, divided his life from Rosamund's, to match her mysticism with something which would be able to call it out of its mysterious understanding. Instead of retreating to God alone she might then, perhaps, take him with her; instead of praying over him she might pray with him. If, after he returned from South Africa, Rosamund were ever again to be deliberately good with him, making such an effort as she had made on that horrible evening in Little Market Street when he had told her he was going on active service, he felt that he simply couldn't bear it.

He put firmly aside the natural longings for home which often assailed him, and threw himself heart and soul into his new duties. Already he felt happier, for he was "out" to draw from the present, from the whole of it, all the building material it contained, and was resolute to use all that material in the construction of a palace, a future based on marble, strong, simple, noble, a Parthenon of the future. Only the weak man looks to omens, is governed in his mind, and so in his actions, by them. That which he had not known how to win in an easy life he must learn to win in a life that was hard. This war he would take as a gift to him, something to be used finely. If he fell in it still he would have had his gift, the chance to realize some of his latent and best possibilities. He swept out of his mind an old thought, the creeping surmise that perhaps Rosamund had given him all she had to give in lover's love, that she knew how to love as child and as mother, but that she was incapable of being a great lover in man's sense of the term when he applies it to woman.

Madeira was passed on January the twenty-fifth, and the men, staring across the sea, saw its lofty hills rising dreamily out of the haze, watchers of those who would not stop, who had no time for any eating of the lotus. Heat came upon the ship, and there were some who pretended that they heard sounds, and smelled perfumes wafted, like messages, from the hidden shores on which probably they would never land. Every one was kept busy, after a sail bath, with drilling, musketry instruction, physical drill, cleaning of accouterments, a dozen things which made the hours go quickly in a buzz of human activities. Some of the men, Dion among them, were trying to learn Dutch under an instructor who knew the mysteries. A call came for volunteers for inoculation, and both Dion and Worthington answered it, with between forty and fifty other men. The prick of the needle was like the touch of a spark; soon after came a mystery of general wretchedness, followed by pains in the loins, a rise of temperature and extreme, in Dion's case even intense, weakness. He lay in his bunk trying to play the detective on himself, to stand outside of his body, saying to himself, "This is I, and I am quite unaffected by my bodily condition." For what seemed to him a long time he was fairly successful in his effort; then the body began to show definitely the power of its weakness upon the Ego, to asset itself by feebleness. His will became like an invalid who is fretful upon the pillows. Soon his strong resolutions, cherished and never to be parted from till out of them the deeds had blossomed, lost blood and fell upon the evil day of anemia. He had a sensation of going out. When the midnight came he could not sleep, and with it came a thought feeble but persistent: "If she loves me it's because I've given her Robin." And in the creaking darkness, encompassed by the restlessness of the sea, again and again he repeated to himself the words—"it's because I've given her Robin." That was the plain truth. If he was loved, he was loved because of something he had done, not because of something that he was. Towards dawn he felt so weak that his hold on life seemed relaxing, and at last he almost wished to let it go. He understood why dying people do not usually fear death.

Three days later he was quite well and at work, but the memory of his illness stayed with him all through the South African campaign. Often at night he returned to that night on shipboard, and said to himself, "The doctor's needle helped me to think clearly."

The voyage slipped away with the unnoticed swiftness that is the child of monotony. The Southern Cross shone above the ship. When the great heat set in the men were allowed to sleep on deck, and Dion lay all night long under the wheeling stars, and often thought of the stars above Drouva, and heard Rosamund's voice saying, "I can see the Pleiades."

The ship crossed the line. Early in February the moon began to show a benign face to the crowd of men. One night there was a concert which was followed by boxing. Dion boxed and won his bout easily on points.

This little success had upon him a bracing effect, and gave him a certain prestige among his comrades. He did well also at revolver and musketry practice—better than many men who, though good enough shots at Bisley, found sectional practice with the service rifle a difficult job, were adepts at missing a mark with the revolver, and knew nothing of fire discipline. Because he had set an aim before him on which he knew that his future happiness depended, he was able to put his whole heart into everything he did. In the simplest duty he saw a means to an end which he desired intensely. Everything that lay to hand in the life of the soldier was building material which he must use to the best advantage. He knew fully, for the first time, the joy of work.

On a day in the middle of February the "Ariosto" passed the mail-boat from the Cape bound for England, sighted Table Mountain, and came to anchor between Robben Island and the docks. On the following morning the men of the C.I.V. felt the earth with eager feet as they marched to Green Point Camp.



CHAPTER III

"Robin," said Rosamund, "would you like to go and live in the country?"

Robin looked very serious and, after a moment of silent consideration, remarked:

"Where there's no houses?"

"Some houses, but not nearly so many as here."

"Would Mr. Thrush be there?"

"Well no, I'm afraid he wouldn't."

Robin began to look decidedly adverse to the proposition.

"You see Mr. Thrush has always lived in London," began Rosamund explanatorily.

"But so've we," interrupted Robin.

"But we aren't as old as Mr. Thrush."

"Is he very old, mummie? How old is he?"

"I don't know, but he's a very great deal older than you are."

"I s'poses," observed Robin meditatively, slightly wrinkling his little nose where the freckles were. "Well, mummie?"

"Old people don't generally like to move about much, but I think it would be very good for you and me to go into the country while father's away."

And taking Robin on her knees, and putting her arms round him, Rosamund began to tell him about the country, developing enthusiasm as she talked, bending over the little fair head that was so dear to her—the little fair head which contained Robin's dear little thoughts, funny and very touching, but every one of them dear.

She described to Robin the Spring as it is in the English country, frail and fragrant, washed by showers that come and go with a waywardness that seems very conscious, warmed by sunbeams not fully grown up and therefore not able to do the work of the sunbeams of summer. She told him of the rainbow that is set in the clouds like a promise made from a very great distance, and of the pale and innocent flowers of Spring: primroses, periwinkles, violets, cowslips, flowers of dells in the budding woods, and of clearings round which the trees stand on guard about the safe little daisies and wild hyacinths and wild crocuses; flowers of the sloping meadows that go down to the streams of Spring. And all along the streams the twigs are budding; the yellow "lambs' tails" swing in the breeze, as if answering to the white lambs' tails that are wagging in the fields. The thrush sings in the copse, and in his piercing sweet note is the sound of Spring.

Bending over Robin, Rosamund imitated the note of the thrush, and Robin stared up at her with ardent eyes.

"Does Mr. Thrush ever do that?"

"I've never heard him do it."

And she went on talking about the Spring.

How she loved that hour talking of Spring in the country with her human Spring in her arms. What was the war to her just then? Robin abolished war. While she had him there was always the rainbow, the perfect rainbow, rising from the world to the heavens and falling from the heavens to the world. The showers were fleeting Spring showers, and the clouds were fleecy and showed the blue.

"Robin, Robin, Robin!" she breathed over her child, when they had lived in the Spring together, the pure and exquisite Spring.

And Robin, all glowing with the ardor he had caught from her, declared for the country.

A few days later Rosamund wrote to Canon Wilton, who happened to be in residence at Welsley out of his usual time, and asked him if he knew of any pretty small house, with a garden, in the neighborhood, where she and Robin could settle down till Dion came back from the war. In answer she got a letter from the Canon inviting her to spend a night or two at his house in the Precincts. In a P.S. he wrote:

"If you can come next week I think I can arrange with Mr. Soames, our precentor, for Wesley's 'Wilderness' to be sung at one of the afternoon services; but let me know by return what days you will be here."

Rosamund replied by telegraph. Aunt Beatrice was installed in Little Market Street for a couple of nights as Robin's protector, and Rosamund went down to Welsley, and spent two days with the Canon.

She had never been alone with him before, except now and then for a few minutes, but he was such a sincere and plain-spoken man that she had always felt she genuinely knew him. To every one with whom he spoke he gave himself as he was. This unusual sincerity in Rosamund's eyes was a great attraction. She often said that she could never feel at home with pretense even if the intention behind it was kindly. Perhaps, however, she did not always detect it, although she possessed the great gift of feminine intuition.

She arrived by the express, which reached Welsley Station in the evening, and found Canon Wilton at the station to meet her. His greeting was:

"The 'Wilderness,' Wesley, at the afternoon service to-morrow."

"That's good of you!" she exclaimed, with the warm and radiant cordiality that won her so many friends. "I shall revel in my little visit here. It's an unexpected treat."

The Canon seemed for a moment almost surprised by her buoyant anticipation, and a look that was sad flitted across his face; but she did not notice it.

As they drove in a fly to his house in the Precincts she looked out at the busy provincial life in the narrow streets of the old country town, and enjoyed the intimate concentration of it all.

"I should like to poke about here," she said. "I should feel at home as I never do in London. I believe I'm thoroughly provincial at heart."

In the highest tower of the Cathedral, which stood in the heart of the town, the melodious chimes lifted up their crystalline voices, and "Great John" boomed out the hour in a voice of large authority.

"Seven o'clock," said the Canon. "Dinner is at eight. You'll be all alone with me this evening."

"To-morrow too, I hope," Rosamund said, with a smile.

"No, to-morrow we shall be the awkward number—three. Mr. Robertson, from Liverpool, is coming to stay with me for a few days. He preaches here next Sunday evening."

Rosamund's thought was carried back to a foggy night in London, when she had heard a sermon on egoism, and a quotation she had never forgotten: "Ego dormio et cor meum vigilat."

"Can you manage with two clergymen?" said Canon Wilton.

"I'll try. I don't think they'll frighten me, and I've been wishing to meet Mr. Robertson for a long time."

"He's a good man," said Canon Wilton very simply. But the statement as he made it was like an accolade.

Rosamund enjoyed her quiet evening with the Canon in the house with the high green gate, the elm trees and the gray gables. As they talked, at first in the oak-paneled dining-room, later in the Canon's library by a big wood fire, she was always pleasantly conscious of being enclosed, of being closely sheltered in the arms of the Precincts, which held also the mighty Cathedral with its cloisters, its subterranean passages, its ancient tombs, its mysterious courts, its staircases, its towers hidden in the night. The ecclesiastical flavor which she tasted was pleasant to her palate. She loved the nearness of those stones which had been pressed by the knees of pilgrims, of those walls between which so many prayers had been uttered, so many praises had been sung. A cosiness of religion enwrapped her. She had a delicious feeling of safety. They could hear the chimes where they sat encompassed by a silence which was not like ordinary silences, but which to Rosamund seemed impregnated with the peace of long meditations and of communings with the unseen.

"This rests me," she said to her host. "Don't you love your time here?"

"I'm fond of Welsley, but I don't think I should like to pass all my year in it. I don't believe in sinking down into religion, or into practises connected with it, as a soft old man sinks down into a feather bed. And that's what some people do."

"Do they?" said Rosamund abstractedly.

Just then a large and murmurous sound, apparently from very far off, had begun to steal upon her ears, level and deep, suggestive almost of the vast slumber of a world and of the underthings that are sleepless but keep at a distance.

"Is it the organ?" she asked, in a listening voice.

Canon Wilton nodded.

"Dickinson practising."

They sat in silence for a long time listening. In that silence the Canon was watching Rosamund. He thought how beautiful she was and how good, but he almost disliked the joy which he discerned in her expression, in her complete repose. He rebuked himself for this approach to dislike, but his rebuke was not efficacious. In this enclosed calm of the precincts of Welsley where, pacing within the walls by the edge of the velvety lawns, the watchman would presently cry out the hour Canon Wilton was conscious of a life at a distance, the life of a man he had met first in St. James's Square. The beautiful woman in the chair by the fire had surely forgotten that man.

Presently the distant sound of the organ ceased.

"I love Welsley," said Rosamund, on a little sigh. "I just love it. I should like to live in the Precincts."

That brought them to a discussion of plans in which Dion was talked of with warm affection and admiration by Rosamund; and all the time she was talking, Canon Wilton saw the beautiful woman in the chair listening to the distant organ. He knew of a house that was to be let in the Precincts, but that night he did not mention it. Something prevented him from doing so—something against which he struggled, but which he failed to overcome.

When they separated it was nearly eleven o'clock. As Rosamund took her silver candlestick from the Canon at the foot of the shallow oak staircase she said:

"I've had such a happy evening!"

It was a very sweet compliment very sweetly paid. No man could have been quite indifferent to it. Canon Wilton was not. As he looked at Rosamund a voice within him said:

"That's a very dear woman."

It spoke undeniable truth. Yet another voice whispered:

"Oh, if I could change her!"

But that was impossible. The Canon knew that, for he was very sincere with himself; and he realized that the change he wanted to see could only come from within, could never be imposed by him from without upon the mysterious dweller in the Temple of Rosamund.

That night Rosamund undressed very slowly and "pottered about" in her room, doing dreamily unnecessary things. She heard the chimes, and she heard the watchman calling the midnight hour near her window as "Great John" lifted up his voice. In the drawers where her clothes were laid the Canon's housekeeper had put lavender. She smelt it as she listened to the watchman's voice, shutting her eyes. Presently she drew aside curtain and blind and looked out of the window. She saw the outline of part of the great Cathedral with the principal tower, the home of "Great John"; she felt the embracing arms of the Precincts; and when she knelt down to say her prayers she thought:

"Here is a place where I can really pray."

Nuns surely are helped by their convents and monks by the peace of their whitewashed cells.

"It is only in sweet places of retirement that one can pray as one ought to pray," thought Rosamund that night as she lay in bed.

She forgot that the greatest prayer ever offered up was uttered on a cross in the midst of a shrieking crowd.

On the following day she went to the morning service in the Cathedral, and afterwards heard something which filled her with joyful anticipation. Canon Wilton told her there was a house to let in the Precincts.

"I'll take it," said Rosamund at once. "Esme Darlington has found me a tenant for No. 5, an old friend of his, or rather two old friends, Sir John and Lady Tenby. Where is it?"

He took her to see it.

The house in question had been occupied by the widow of a Dean, who had recently been driven by her health to "relapse upon Bournemouth." It was a small old house with two very large rooms—one was the drawing-room, the other a bed-room.

The house stood at right angles to the east end of the Cathedral, from which it was only divided by a strip of turf broken up by fragments of old gray ruins, and edged by an iron railing, and by a paved passage-way, which led through the Dark Entry from the "Green Court," where the Deanery and Minor Canons' houses were situated, to the pleasaunce immediately around the Cathedral. To the green lawns of this wide pleasaunce the houses of the residentiary Canons gave access. One projecting latticed window of the drawing-room of Mrs. Browning's house, another of the big bedroom above it, and the windows of the kitchen and the servants' quarters looked on to the passage-way and the Cathedral; all the other windows looked into an old garden surrounded by a very high brick wall, a garden of green turf like moss, of elm trees, and, in summer, of gay herbaceous borders, a garden to which the voices of the chimes dropped down, and to which the Cathedral organ sent its message, as if to a place that knew how to keep safely all things that were precious. Even the pure and chill voices of the boy choristers found a way to this hidden garden, in which there were straight and narrow paths, where nuns might have loved to walk unseen of the eyes of men.

The Dean's widow had left behind all her furniture, and was now adorning a Bournemouth hotel, in which her sprightly invalidism and close knowledge of the investments of the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, and of the habits and customs of the lesser clergy, were greatly appreciated. Some of the furniture did not wholly commend itself to Rosamund. There were certain settees and back-to-backs, certain whatnots and occasional tables, which seemed to stamp the character of the Dean's widow as meretricious. But these could easily be "managed." Rosamund was enchanted with the house, and went from room to room with Canon Wilton radiantly curious, and almost as excited as a joyous schoolgirl.

"I must poke my nose into everything!" she exclaimed.

And she did it, and made the Canon poke his too.

Presently, opening the lattice of the second window in the big, low-ceiled drawing-room, she leaned out to the moist and secluded garden. She was sitting sideways on the window-seat, of which she had just said, "I won't have this dreadful boudoir color on my cushions!" Canon Wilton was standing behind her, and presently heard her sigh gently, and almost voluptuously, as if she prolonged the sigh and did not want to let it go.

"Yes?" he said, with a half-humorous inflection of the voice.

Rosamund looked round gravely.

"Did you say something?"

"Only—yes?—in answer to your sigh."

"Did I? Yes, I must have. I was thinking——"

She hesitated, while he stood looking at her with his strong, steady gray-blue eyes.

"I was thinking of a life I shall never live."

He came up to the window-seat.

"Some of it might have been passed in just such a garden as this within sound of bells."

With a change of voice she added:

"How Robin will love it!"

"The life you will never live?" said the Canon, smiling gravely.

"No, the garden."

"Then you haven't a doubt?"

"Oh no. When I know a thing there's no room in me for hesitation. I shall love being here with Robin as I have never loved anything yet."

The quarter struck in the Cathedral tower.

"Very different from South Africa!" said Canon Wilton.

Rosamund knitted her brows for a moment.

"I wonder whether Dion will come back altered," she said.

"D'you wish him to?"

She got up from the window-seat, put out her hand, and softly pulled the lattice towards her.

"Not in most ways. He's so dear as he is. It would all depend on the alteration."

She latched the window gently, and again looked at the garden through it.

"I may be altered, too, by living here!" she said. "All alone with Robin. I think I shall be."

Canon Wilton made no comment. He was thinking:

"And when the two, altered, come together again, if they ever do, what then?"

He had noticed that Rosamund never seemed to think of Dion's death in South Africa as a possibility. When she spoke of him she assumed his return as a matter of course. Did she never think of death, then? Did she, under the spell of her radiant and splendidly healthy youth, forget all the tragic possibilities? He wondered, but he did not ask.

Mr. Robertson arrived at the Canon's house just in time for the afternoon service—"my Wilderness service," as Rosamund called it. The bells were ringing as he drove up with his modest luggage, and Rosamund had already gone to the Cathedral and was seated in a stall.

"I should like to have half an hour's quiet meditation in church before the service begins," she had remarked to Canon Wilton. And the Canon had put her in a stall close to where he would presently be sitting, and had then hurried back to meet Father Robertson.

"My Welsley!" was Rosamund's thought as she sat in her stall, quite alone, looking up at the old jeweled glass in the narrow Gothic windows, at the wonderful somber oak, age-colored, of the return stalls and canopy beneath which Canon Wilton, as Canon-in-Residence, would soon be sitting at right angles to her, at the distant altar lifted on high and backed by a delicate marble screen, beyond which stretched a further, tranquilly obscure vista of the great church. The sound of the bells ringing far above her head in the gray central tower was heard by her, but only just heard, as we hear the voices of the past murmuring of old memories and of deeds which are almost forgotten. Distant footsteps echoed among the great tombs of stone and of marble, which commemorated the dead who had served God in that place in the gray years gone by. In her nostrils there seemed to be a perfume, like an essence of concentrated prayers sent up among these stone traceries, these pointed arches, these delicate columns, by generations of believers. She felt wrapped in a robe never woven by hands, in a robe that gave warmth to her spirit.

A few people began stealing quietly in through the narrow archway in the great screen which shut out the raised choir from the nave. Only one bell sounded now in the gray tower. A faint noise, like an oncoming sigh, above Rosamund's head heralded the organ's awakening, and was followed by the whisper of its most distant voice, a voice which made her think—she knew not why—of the sea whispering about a coral reef in an isle of the Southern Seas, part of God's world, mysteriously linked to "my Welsley." She shut her eyes, seeking to feel more strongly the sensation of unity. When she opened them she saw, sitting close to her in the return stalls, Father Robertson. His softly glowing eyes were looking at her, and did not turn away immediately. She felt that he knew she was his fellow-guest, and was conscious of a delicious sensation of sympathy, of giving and taking, of cross currents of sympathy between the Father and herself.

"I love this hour—I love all this!" she said to herself.

If only little Robin were submerged in the stall beside her!

The feet of the slow procession were heard, and the silver wand of the chief verger shone out of the delicate gloom.

When the anthem was given out Rosamund looked across at Canon Wilton, and her eyes said to him, "Thank you." Then she stood up, folded her hands on the great cushion in front of her, and looked at the gray vistas and at the dim sparkle of the ancient glass in the narrow windows.

"The wilderness and the solitary places . . ."

She had spoken of this to Dion as they looked at Zante together, before little Robin had come, and she had said that if she had committed a great sin she would like to take her sin into the Wilderness, because purification might be found there. And she had meant what she said, had spoken out of her heart sincerely. But now, as she listened to this anthem, she saw a walled-in garden, with green turf like moss, old elm trees and straight narrow paths. Perhaps she had been mistaken when she had spoken of the sin and the Wilderness, perhaps she would find purification with fewer tears and less agony in the cloister, within the sound of the bells which called men to the service of God, and of the human voices which sang His praises. Saints had fled into the Wilderness to seek God there, but was He not in the Garden between the sheltering walls, ready there, as in the farthest desert, to receive the submission of the soul, to listen to the cry, "I have sinned"?

As in Elis the spell of the green wild had been upon Rosamund, so now the spell of these old Precincts was upon her, and spoke to her innermost being, and as in Elis Dion had been woven into her dream of the Wilderness, so now in Welsley Robin was woven into it. But Dion had seemed a forerunner, and little Robin seemed That for which she had long waited, the fulfilment of the root desire of her whole being as applied to human life.

When the service was over and the procession had gone out Rosamund sat very still listening to the organ. She believed that Canon Wilton had given the organist a hint that he would have an attentive hearer, for he was playing one of Bach's greatest preludes and fugues. Father Robertson stayed on in his place. All the rest of the small congregation drifted away through the archway in the rood-screen and down the steps to the nave. The fugue was a glorious, sturdy thing, like a great solid body inhabited by a big, noble, unquestioning soul—a soul free from hesitations, that knew its way to God and would not be hindered from taking it. A straight course to the predestined end—that was good, that was glorious! The splendid clamor of the organ above her, growing in sonorous force, filled Rosamund with exultation. She longed to open her mouth and sing; the blood came to her cheeks; her eyes shone; she mounted on the waves of sound; she was wound up with the great fugue, and felt herself part of it. The gradual working up thrilled her whole being; she was physically and spiritually seized hold of and carried along towards a great and satisfying end. At last came the trumpet with its sound of triumphant flame, and the roar of the pedals was like the roaring of the sea. Already the end was there, grandly inherent in the music, inevitably, desired by all the voices of the organ. All the powers of the organ thundered towards it, straining to be there.

It came, like something on the top of the world.

"If I were a man that's the way I should like to go to God!" said Rosamund to herself, springing up. "That's the way, in a chariot of fire."

Unconscious of what she was doing she stretched out her hands with a big gesture and opened her lips to let out a breath; then, in the gray silence of the now empty Cathedral, she saw Father Robertson's eyes.

He stepped down from his stall and went out through the archway, and she followed him. On the steps, just beyond the rood-screen, she met a small, determined-looking man with hot cheeks and shining eyes. She guessed at once that he was the organist, went up to him and thanked him enthusiastically.

The organist was the first person she captivated in Welsley, where she was to have so many warm adherents very soon.

Father Robertson went back to Canon Wilton's house while Rosamund talked to the organist, with whom she walked as far as a high wooden gate labeled "Mr. Dickinson."

"You've got a walled garden too!" she remarked, as her companion took off his hat with an "I live here."

The organist looked inquiring. Rosamund laughed.

"How could you know? It's only that I've been visiting a delicious old house, with a walled garden, to-day. It's to let."

"Oh, Mrs. Duncan Browning's!" said Mr. Dickinson. "I—I'm sure I hope you're going to take it."

"I may!" said Rosamund. "Good-by, and thank you again for your splendid music. It's done me good."

"My dear!" exclaimed Mr. Dickinson, about a minute later, bursting—rather than going—into his wife's small drawing-room, "I've just met the most delightful woman, a goddess to look at, and as charming as a siren brought up to be a saint."

"More epigrams, Henry!" murmured Mrs. Dickinson.

"She's staying with Canon Wilton. She's a thorough musician such as one seldom comes across. There's a chance—I hope it materializes—of her taking—"

"Your tea is nearly cold, Henry."

"Her name is Mrs. Dion Leith. If she really does come here we must be sure to—"

"Scones, Henry?"

Thus urged, Mr. Dickinson's body for the moment took precedence of his soul.

Rosamund knew she was going to like Mr. Robertson as she liked very few people. She felt as if already she was his friend, and when they shook hands in Canon Wilton's drawing-room she cordially told him so, and referred to the Sunday evening when she had heard him preach. The rooks were cawing among the elms in the Canon's garden. She could hear their voices in the treetops while she was speaking. A wind was stirring as the afternoon waned, and there came a patter of rain on the lofty windows. And the voices of the rooks, in the windy treetops, the patter of the rain, and the sigh of the wind were delightful to Rosamund, because she was safely within the Precincts, like a bird surrounded by the warmth of its nest.

"I'm coming to live here," she said to Mr. Robertson, as she poured out tea for the two clergymen. "My husband has gone to South Africa with the City Imperial Volunteers. He's in business, so we live in London. But while he's away I mean to stay here."

And eagerly almost as a child, she told him about the house of the Dean's widow, and described to him the garden.

"It's like a convent garden, isn't it?" she asked Canon Wilton, who assented. "That's why I love it. It gives me the feeling of enclosed peace that must be so dear to nuns."

Something in her voice and look as she said this evidently struck Mr. Robertson, and when she presently left the room he said to Canon Wilton:

"If I didn't know that sweet woman had a husband I should say she was born with the vocation for a religious life. From the first moment I spoke to her, looked at her, I felt that, and the feeling grows upon me. Can't one see her among sisters?"

"I don't wish to," said Canon Wilton bluntly. "Shall we go to my study?"

With the composed gentleness that was characteristic of him Father Robertson assented, and they went downstairs. When they were safely shut up in the big room, guarded by multitudes of soberly bound volumes, Canon Wilton said:

"Robertson, I want to talk to you in confidence about my guest, who, as you say, is a very sweet woman. You could do something for her which I couldn't do. I have none of your impelling gentleness. You know how to stir that which dwells in the inner sanctuary, to start it working for itself; I'm more apt to try to work for it, or at it. Perhaps I can rouse up a sinner and make him think. I've got a good bit of the instinct of the missioner. But my dear guest there isn't a sinner, except as we all are! She's a very good woman who doesn't quite understand. I think perhaps you might help her to understand. She possesses a great love, and she doesn't know quite how to handle it, or even to value it."

The clock struck seven when they stopped talking.

That evening, after dinner, Canon Wilton asked Rosamund to sing. Almost eagerly she agreed.

"I shall love to sing in the Precincts," she said, as she went to the piano.

Father Robertson, who had been sitting with his back to the piano, moved to the other side of the room. While Rosamund sang he watched her closely. He saw that she was quite unconscious of being watched, and her unconsciousness of herself made him almost love her. Her great talent he appreciated fully, for he was devoted to music; but he appreciated much more the moral qualities she showed in her singing. He was a man who could not forbear from searching for the soul, from following its workings. He had met all sorts and conditions of men, and with few he had not been friends. He had known, knew now, scientists for whose characters and lives he had strong admiration, and who felt positive that the so-called soul of man was merely the product of the brain, resided in the brain, and must cease with the dispersal of the brain at death. He was not able to prove the contrary. That did not trouble him at all. It was not within the power of anything or of any one to trouble this man's faith. He did not mind being thought a fool. Indeed, being without conceit, and even very modest, he believed himself to be sometimes very foolish. But he knew he was not a fool in his faith, which transcended forms, and swore instinctively brotherhood with all honest beliefs, and even with all honest disbeliefs. In his gentle, sometimes slightly whimsical way, he was as sincere as Canon Wilton; but whereas the Canon showed the blunt side of sincerity, he usually showed the tender and winning side. He found good in others as easily and as surely as the diviner finds the spring hidden under the hard earth's surface. His hazel twig twisted if there was present only one drop of the holy water.

He discerned many drops in Rosamund. In nothing of her was her enthusiasm for what was noble and clean and sane and beautiful more apparent than in her singing. Her voice and her talent were in service when she sang, in service to the good. Music can be evil, neurotic, decadent and even utterly base. She never touched musical filth, which she recognized as swiftly as dirt on a body or corruption in a soul.

"We must have Bach's 'Heart ever faithful,'" said Canon Wilton strongly, when Rosamund, after much singing, was about to get up from the piano.

Almost joyfully she obeyed his smiling command. When at last she shut the piano she said to Father Robertson:

"That's Dion's—my husband's—best-loved melody."

"I should like to know your husband," said Father Robertson.

"You must, when he comes back."

"You have no idea, I suppose, how long he will be away?"

"No, nor has he."

"Then what are you going to do about Mrs. Browning's house?" said the Canon's bass.

"Oh—well——"

Two lines appeared in her forehead.

"I thought of taking it for six months, and then I can see. My little house in Westminster is let for six months from the first of March." She had turned to Father Robertson: "I'm only afraid——" She paused. She looked almost disturbed.

"What are you afraid of?" asked Canon Wilton.

"I'm afraid of getting too fond of Welsley."

The Canon looked across at Father Robertson on the other side of the fireplace.

* * * * *

Rosamund went back to Robin and London on the following afternoon. In the morning she took Father Robertson to see Mrs. Browning's house. Canon Wilton was busy. After the morning service in the Cathedral he had to go to a meeting of the Chapter, and later on to a meeting in the City about something connected with education.

"I shall be in bonds till lunch," he said, "unless I burst them, as I'm afraid I sometimes feel inclined to do when people talk at great length on subjects they know nothing about."

"Perhaps Mrs. Leith will kindly take me to see her house and garden," observed Father Robertson.

Rosamund was frankly delighted.

"Bless you for calling them mine!" she said. "That's just what I'm longing to do."

The wind and the rain were till hanging about in a fashion rather undecided. It was a morning of gusts and of showers. The rooks swayed in the elm tops, or flew up under the scudding clouds of a treacherous sky. There was a strong smell of damp earth, and the turf of the wide spreading lawns looked spongy.

"Oh, how English this is!" said Rosamund enthusiastically to the Father as they set forth together. "It's like the smell of the soul of England. I love it. I should like to lie on the grass and feel the rain on my face."

"You know nothing of rheumatism evidently," said Father Robertson, in a voice that was smiling.

"No, but I suppose I should if I gave way to my impulse. And the rooks would be shocked."

"Do you mean the Cathedral dignitaries?"

They were gently gay as they walked along, but very soon Rosamund, in her very human but wholly unconscious way, put her hand on Father Robertson's arm.

"There it is!"

"Your house?"

"Yes. Isn't it sweet? Doesn't it look peacefully old? I should like to grow old like that, calmly, unafraid and unrepining. I knew you'd love it."

He had not said so, but that did not matter.

"There's a dear old caretaker, with only one tooth in front and such nice eyes, who'll let us in. Not an electric bell!"

She gave him a look half confidential, half humorous, and wholly girlish.

"We have to pull it. That's so much nicer!"

She pulled, and the dear old caretaker, a woman in Cathedral black, with the look of a verger's widow all over her, showed the tooth in a smile as she peeped round the door.

"And now the garden!" said Rosamund, in the withdrawn voice of an intense anticipation, half an hour later, when Father Robertson had seen, and been consulted, about everything from kitchen to attic.

She turned round to Mrs. Soper, as the verger's widow—indeed she was that!—was called.

"Shall you mind if we stay a good while in the garden, Mrs. Soper? It's so delightful there. Will it bother you?"

"Most pleased, ma'am! I couldn't wish for anything else. You do hear the chimes most beautiful from there. But it's very damp. That we must allow."

"Are you afraid of the damp, Father?"

"Not a bit."

"I knew you wouldn't be," she said, almost exultantly.

Mrs. Soper took her stand by the drawing-room window and gazed through the lattice with the deep interest which seems peculiar to provincial towns, and which is seldom manifested in capitals, where the curiosity is rather of the surface than of the very entrails of humanity. She showed the tooth as she stood, but not in a smile. She was far too interested in the lady and the white-haired clergyman to smile.

"I shouldn't wonder but what they're going to be married!" was her feminine thought, as she watched them walking about the garden, and presently pacing up and down one of the narrow paths, to the far-off wall that bordered one end of the Bishop's Palace, and back again to the wall near the Dark Entry. Canon Wilton had not mentioned Rosamund's name to the verger's widow, who had no evil thoughts of bigamy. Presently the chimes sounded in the tower, and Mrs. Soper saw the two visitors pause in their walk to listen. They both looked upwards towards the Cathedral, and on the lady's face there was a rapt expression which was remarked by Mrs. Soper.

"She do look religious," murmured that lady to the tooth. "She might be a bishop's lady when she a-stands like that."

The chimes died away, the visitors resumed their pacing walk, and Mrs. Soper presently retired to the kitchen, which looked out on the passage-way, to cook herself "a bit of something" for the midday staying of her stomach.

In the garden that morning Rosamund and Father Robertson became friends. Rosamund had never had an Anglican confessor, though she had sometimes wished to confess, not because she was specially conscious of a burden of sin, but rather because she longed to speak to some one of those inmost thoughts which men and women seldom care to discuss with those who are always in their lives. In Father Robertson she had found the exceptional man with whom she would not mind being perfectly frank about matters which were not for Dion, not for Beattie, not for godfather—matters which she could never have hinted at even to Canon Wilton, whose strong serenity she deeply admired. Had any of her nearest and dearest heard Rosamund's talk with Father Robertson that day, they would have realized, perhaps with astonishment, how strong was the reserve which underlay her forthcoming manner and capacious frankness about the ordinary matters of everyday existence.

"Father, a sermon from you changed my life, I think," she said, when they had paced up and down the path only two or three times; and, without any self-consciousness, she told him of Dion's proposal on that foggy afternoon in London, of her visit to St. Mary's, Welby Street, and of the impression the sermon had made upon her. She described her return home, and the painful sensation which had beset her when she lost herself in the fog—the sensation of desertion, of a horror of loneliness.

"The next day I accepted my husband," she said. "I resolved to take the path of life along which I could walk with another. I decided to share. Do you remember?"

She looked at him gently, earnestly, and he understood the allusion to his sermon.

"Yes, I remember. But,"—his question came very gently—"in coming to that decision, were you making a sacrifice?"

"Yes, I was."

And then Rosamund made a confession such as she had never yet made to any one, though once she had allowed Dion to know a little of what was in her heart. She told Father Robertson of the something almost imperious within her which had longed for the religious life. He listened to the story of a vocation; and he was able to understand it as certainly Canon Wilton could not have understood it. For Rosamund's creeping hunger had been not for the life of hard work among the poor in religion, not for the dedication of all her energies to the lost and unreclaimed, who are sunk in the mire of the world, but for that peculiar life of the mystic who leaves the court of the outer things for the court of the mysteries, the inner things, who enters into prayer as into a dark shell filled with the vast and unceasing murmur of the voice which is not human.

"I wished to sing in public for a time. Something made me long to use my voice, to express myself in singing noble music, in helping on its message. But I meant to retire while I was still quite young. And always at the back of my mind there was the thought—'then I'll leave the world, I'll give myself up to God.' I longed for the enclosed life of perpetual devotion. I didn't know whether there was any community in our Church which I could join, and in which I could find what I thought I needed. I didn't get so far as that. You see I meant to be a singer at first."

"Yes, I quite understand. And the giving up of this mystical dream was a great sacrifice?"

"Really it was. I had a sort of absolute hunger in me to do eventually what I have told you."

"I understand that hunger," said Father Robertson.

Just then the chimes sounded in the Cathedral, and they stopped on the narrow path to listen, looking up at the great gray tower which held the voices sweet to their souls.

"I understand that hunger," he repeated, when the chimes died away. "It can be fierce as any hunger after a sin. In your case you felt it was not free from egoism, this strong desire?"

"Your sermon made me look into my heart, and I did think that perhaps I was an egoist in my religious feeling, that I was selfishly intent on my own soul, that in my religion, if I did what I longed presently to do, I should be thinking almost solely of myself."

Rather abruptly Father Robertson put a question:

"There was nothing else which drew you towards marriage?"

"I liked and admired Dion very much. I thought him an exceptional sort of man. I knew he cared for me in a beautiful sort of way. That touched me. And"—she slightly hesitated, and a soft flush came to her cheeks—"I felt that he was a good man in a way—I believe, I am almost sure, that very few young men are good in the particular way I mean. Of all the things in Dion that was the one which most strongly called to me."

Father Robertson understood her allusion to physical purity.

"I couldn't have married him but for that," she added.

"If I had known you when you were a girl I believe I should not have expected you to marry," said Father Robertson.

Afterwards, when he had seen Rosamund with Robin, he thought he had been very blind when he had said that.

"You understand me," she said, very simply. "But I knew you would."

"You have given up something. Many people, perhaps most people, would deny that. But I know how difficult it is"—his voice became lower—"to give up retirement, to give up that food which the soul instinctively longs to find, thinks perhaps it only can find, in silence, perpetual meditation, perpetual prayer, in the world that is purged of the insistent clamor of human voices. But"—he straightened himself with a quick movement, and his voice became firmer—"a man may wish to draw near to God in the Wilderness, or in the desert, and may find Him most surely in"—and here he hesitated slightly, almost as a few minutes before Rosamund had hesitated—"in the Liverpool slums. What a blessing it is, what an unspeakable blessing it is, when one has learnt the lesson that God is everywhere. But how difficult it is to learn!"

They walked together for a long time in the garden, and Rosamund felt strangely at ease, like one who has entered a haven and has found the desired peace. She had given up something, but how much had been given to her! In the shelter of the gray towers, and within the enclosing walls, she would go again to some of her dreams, while the chimes marked the passing of the quiet hours, and the watchman's voice was lifted up to the stars which looked down on Welsley.

And Robin would be with her.



CHAPTER IV

A little more than six months later, when a golden September lay over the land, Rosamund could scarcely believe that she had ever lived out of Welsley. Dion was still in South Africa, in good health and "without a scratch." In his last letter home he had written that he had no idea how long the C.I.V.'s would be kept in South Africa. The war dragged on, and despite the English successes which had followed such bitter defeats no one could say when it would end. There was no immediate reason, therefore, for Rosamund to move back to London.

She dreaded that return. She loved Welsley and could not now imagine herself living anywhere else. Robin, too was a pronounced, even an enthusiastic, "Welsleyite," and had practically forgotten "old London," as he negligently called the greatest city in the world. They were very happy in Welsley. In fact, the Dean's widow was the only rift in Rosamund's lute, that lute which was so full of sweet and harmonious music.

Rosamund's lease of the house in the Precincts, "Little Cloisters," as it was deliciously named, had been for six months, from the 1st of March till the 1st of September. As Dion was not coming home yet, and as he wrote begging her to live on at Welsley if she preferred it to London, she was anxious to "renew" for another six months. The question whether Mrs. Duncan Browning would, or would not, renew really tormented Rosamund, and the uncertainty in which she was living, and the misery it caused her, showed her how much of her heart had been given to Welsley.

The Dean's widow was capricious and swayed by fluctuations of health. She was "up and down," whatever that betokened. At one moment she "saw the sun,"—her poetical way of expressing that she began to feel pretty well,—and thought she had had enough of the "frivolous existence one leads in an hotel"; at another a fit of sneezing,—"was not the early morning sneeze but the real thing,"—a pang of rheumatism, or a touch of bronchitis, made her fear for the damp of Welsley. She would and she would not, and Rosamund could not induce her to come to a decision, and suffered agonies at the thought of being turned out of Little Cloisters. When Dion came back, of course, a flitting from Welsley would have to be faced, but to be driven away without that imperative reason would indeed be gall and wormwood. There were days when Rosamund felt unchristian towards Mrs. Dean, upon whom she had never looked, but with whom she had exchanged a great many cordial letters.

In August, under the influence of a "heavy cold, which seems the worse because of the heat," Mrs. Browning had agreed to let Rosamund stay on for another month, September; and now Rosamund was anxiously awaiting a reply to her almost impassioned appeal for a six months' extension of her lease. Canon Wilton was again in residence in the Precincts, and one afternoon he called at Little Cloisters, after the three o'clock service, to inquire what was the result of this appeal. Beatrice was staying with her sister for a few days, and when the Canon was shown in she was alone in the drawing-room, having just come up from the garden, where she had been playing with Robin, whose chirping high voice was audible, floating up from below.

"Is your sister busy?" asked the Canon, after greeting Beatrice.

Beatrice smiled faintly.

"She's in her den. What do you think she is doing?"

The Canon looked hard at her, and he too smiled.

"Not writing again to Mrs. Browning?"

Beatrice nodded, and sat gently down on the window-seat.

"Begging and praying for an extension."

"I've never seen any one so in love with a place as your sister is with Welsley."

He sat down near Beatrice.

"But it is attractive, isn't it?" she said.

She turned her head slowly and looked out of the open window to the enclosed garden which was bathed in mellow sunshine. The sky above the gray Cathedral towers was a clear and delicate, not deep, blue. Above the mossy red wall of the garden appeared the ruined arches of the cloisters which gave to the house its name. Among them some doves were cooing. Up in the blue, about the pinnacles of the towers, the rooks were busily flying. Robin, in a little loose shirt, green knickerbockers, and a tiny soft white hat set well on the back of his head, was gardening just below the window with the intensity that belongs to the dawn. His bare brown legs moved rapidly, as he ran from place to place carrying earth, a plant, a bright red watering-pot. The gardener, a large young man, with whom Robin was evidently on the most friendly, and even intimate, terms, was working with him, and apparently under his close and constant supervision. A thrush with very bright eyes looked on from an adjacent elder bush. Upon the wall, near the end of the Bishop's Palace, a black cat was sunning itself and lazily attending to its toilet.

"It's the very place for Rosamund," said Beatrice, after a pause, during which she drank in Welsley. "She seems to know and love every stick and stone in it."

"And almost every man, woman and child," said the Canon. "She began by captivating the Precincts,—not such an easy task either, for a bishop usually has not the taste of a dean, and minor canons think very lightly of the praises of an archdeacon,—and she has ended by captivating the whole city. Even the wives of the clergy sing her praises with one accord. It's the greatest triumph in the history of the church."

"You see she likes them and is thoroughly interested in all their little affairs."

"Yes, it's genuine sympathy. She makes Welsley her world, and so Welsley thinks the world of her."

He looked across at Beatrice for a moment meditatively, and then said:

"And when her husband comes back?"

"Dion! Well, then, of course——"

She hesitated, and in the silence the drawing-room door opened and Rosamund came in, holding an open letter in her hand, knitting her brows, and looking very grave and intense. She greeted the Canon with her usual warm cordiality, but still looked grave and preoccupied.

"I've been writing to Mrs. Browning, about the house," she said earnestly. "It is damp, isn't it?"

"Damp?" said the Canon. "I've never noticed it. But then do you think the house is unwholesome?"

"Not for us. What I feel is, that for a bronchial person it might be."

She paused, looking at her letter.

"I've put just what I feel here, in a letter to Mrs. Browning. I know the house is considered damp; by the Precincts, I mean. Mrs. Murry told me so, and Mrs. Tiling-Smith thinks the same. Even the Bishop—why are you smiling, Canon Wilton?"

But she began to smile too.

"What does the Bishop say about the danger to health of Little Cloisters?"

Her lips twitched, but she replied with firm sweetness:

"The Bishop says that all, or nearly all, old houses are apt to be damp in winter."

"A weighty utterance! But I'm afraid Mrs. Browning—by the way, have you put the Bishop into your letter?"

"I had thought of reading it to you both, but now I shall not."

She put the letter into an envelope, sealed it up with practical swiftness, rang the bell for Annie and sent it to the postbox round the corner.

"I put the Bishop in," she added, with a mockery of defiance that was almost girlish, when Annie had gone out.

"That was a mistake," said the Canon sonorously.

"Why?"

"Bishops never carry weight with the wives, or widows, of deans."

"But why not?" asked Rosamund, with a touch of real anxiety.

"Because the wives of deans always think their husbands ought to be bishops instead of those who are bishops, and the widows of deans always consider that they ought to be the widows of bishops. They therefore very naturally feel that bishops are not entitled by merit to the positions they hold, and could be treated with a delicate disdain."

"I never thought of that. I wonder if Annie——"

"Too late!" said the Canon. "You'll have to turn out of Little Cloisters, I foresee that."

Rosamund sat down, leaned towards him with her hands clasped tightly together, and, in her absolutely unself-conscious way, began to tell him and Beattie what she felt about Welsley, or something of what she felt. A good deal she could only have told to Father Robertson. When she had finished, Canon Wilton said, in his rather abrupt and blunt way:

"Well, but if your husband comes home unexpectedly? You can't stay here then, can you?"

Beatrice, who was still on the window seat, leaned out, and began to speak to Robin below her in a quiet voice which could scarcely be heard within the room.

"But Dion sees no prospect of coming home yet."

"I heard to-day from some one in London that the C.I.V. may be back before Christmas."

"Dion doesn't say so."

"It mayn't be true."

"Dion writes that no one out there has any idea when the war will end."

"Probably not. But the C.I.V. mayn't be needed all through the war. Most of them are busy men who've given up a great deal out of sheer patriotism. Fine fellows! They've done admirable work, and the War Office may decide that they've done enough. Things out there have taken a great turn since Roberts and Kitchener went out. The C.I.V. may come marching home long before peace is declared."

He spoke with a certain pressure, a certain intensity, and his eyes never left Rosamund's face.

"I'm glad my Dion's one of them," she said. "And Robin will be glad, too, some day."

She said nothing more about Mrs. Browning and Little Cloisters. But when Canon Wilton had gone she said to her sister:

"Beattie, does it ever strike you that Canon Wilton's rather abrupt and unexpected sometimes in what he says?"

"He doesn't beat about the bush," replied Beatrice. "Do you mean that?"

"Perhaps I do. Now I'm going down to Robin. How strong he's getting here! Hark at his voice! Can't you hear even in his voice how much good Welsley had done him?"

Robin's determined treble was audible as he piped out:

"Oh no, Fipper! Not by the Bish's wall! Why, I say, the slugs always comes there. They do, weally! You come and see! Come quick! I'll show——"

The voice faded in the direction of the Palace.

"I must go down and see if it's true about the slugs," exclaimed Rosamund.

And with beaming eyes she hastened out of the room.

Beatrice looked after her and sighed. Dion's last letter from South Africa was lying on the writing-table close to her. Rosamund had already given it to her to read. Now she took it up and read it carefully again. The doves cooed in the cloisters; the bells chimed in the tower; the mellow sunshine—already the sunshine not of full summer, but of the dawning autumn, with its golden presage of days not golden, and of nights heavy with dews and laden with floating leaves,—came in through the lattice, and lay over her soft and wistful melancholy, as she read of hardship, and dust, and blood and death, told truthfully, but always cheerfully, as a soldier tells a thing to a woman he loves and wishes to be sincere with.

Dion was not in the peace. Dear Rosamund! Did she quite realize? And then Beattie pulled herself up. A disloyal thought surely leaves a stain on the mind through which it passes. Beattie did not want to have a stain on her mind. She cared for it as a delicately refined woman cares for her body, bathing it every day.

She put Dion's letter down.

That evening Rosamund sang at a charity concert in the City Hall. Her music was already a legend in Welsley and the neighborhood. Mr. Dickinson, who always accompanied her singing, declared it emphatically to be "great." The wife of the Bishop, Mrs. Mabberley, pronounced the verdict, "She sings with her soul rather than with her voice," without intention of paying a left-handed compliment. The Cathedral Choir boys affirmed that "our altos are a couple of squeaks beside her." Even Mrs. Dickinson, "the cold douche," as she was named in the Precincts, had long ago "come round" about Mrs. Dion Leith, and had been heard to say of her, "She's got more than a contralto, she's got a heart, and I couldn't say that of some women in high positions." This was "aimed" at the Dean's wife, Mrs. Jasper, who gave herself musical airs, and sometimes tried to "interfere with the Precentor's arrangements," which meant falling foul of "Henry."

As Rosamund looked down upon the rows of friendly and familiar faces from the platform, as she heard the prolonged applause which greeted her before she sang, and the cries of "Encore!" which saluted her when she finished, she felt that she had given her heart irrevocably to Welsley, and the thought came to her, "How can I leave it?" This was cozy, and London could never be cozy. She could identify herself with the concentrated life here, without feeling it a burden upon her. For she was so much beloved that people even respected her privacy, and fell in with what she called "my absurd little ways." In London, however many people you knew, you saw strangers all the time, strangers with hard, indifferent eyes and buttoned-up mouths. And one could never say of London "my London."

When the concert was over she wound a veil about her pale yellow hair, wrapped a thin cloak round her shoulders, took up her music case and asked for Beattie. An eager boy with a smiling round face, one of the Cathedral Choristers, darted off to find Mrs. Daventry, the sister of "our Mrs. Leith"; Mr. Dickinson gently, but decisively, took the music case from Rosamund's hand with an "I'll carry that home for you"; a thin man, like an early primrose obliged by some inadvertence of spring to work for its living, sidled up and begged for the name of "your most beautiful and chaste second encore for our local paper, the 'Welsley Whisperer'"; and Mrs. Dickinson in a pearl gray shawl, with an artificial pink camellia carelessly entangled in her marvelously smooth mouse-colored hair, appeared to tell Mrs. Leith authoritatively that "Madame Patey in her heyday never sang 'O Rest in the Lord' as we have heard it sung to-night."

Then Rosamund, pleasantly surrounded by dear provincial enthusiasts, made her way to the door where Beattie, with more enthusiasts, was waiting for her; and they all came out into the narrow High Street, and found the September moon riding above their heads to give them a greeting nobly serene and beneficent, and they set out sans facon, many of them bare-headed, to walk home down tiny "Archbishop's Lane" to the Precincts.

Rosamund walked with Mr. Dickinson on one side of her and the Dean of Welsley and Mrs. Jasper on the other; Canon Wilton, Beattie, the Archdeacon of Welsley and the Precentor were just in front; behind peacefully streamed minor canons and their wives, young sons and daughters of the Precincts, and various privileged persons who, though not of the hierarchy, possessed small houses within the sacred pale. Only the Bishop and his consort drove majestically home in "Harrington's Fly."

What a chatter of voices there was under the projecting eaves of the dear old house! What happy laughter was wafted towards the smiling moon! Mrs. Dickinson, presently "coming up with" Rosamund's party, became absolutely "waggish" (the Dean's expression), and made Rosamund laugh with that almost helpless spontaneity which is the greatest compliment to a joke. And then the gate in the ancient archway was opened, and they all passed into their great pleasaunce, and, with a sensation of joyous proprietorship, heard the gate shut and locked behind them, and saw the Cathedral lifting its towers to the moon. Laughter was hushed then, and some of the voices were silent; feet went more slowly along the edges of the velvety lawns; the spell of ancient things which are noble, and which tell of the noble ideals of humanity, fell upon them; their hearts within them were lifted up.

When the Dean bade good-night to Rosamund he said:

"Your music and you mean a great deal to Welsley."

"Not half as much as Welsley means to me," she replied with earnest sincerity.

"We are all looking forward to greeting your gallant, self-sacrificing husband presently, very soon I hope. Good-night to you. It has been"—he paused, looked at Rosamund and gently pressed her hand,—"a most fragrant evening."

A most fragrant evening! When Beattie and Rosamund had eaten their sandwiches, and drunk their still lemonade and claret, and when Beattie had gone to bed, Rosamund slipped out alone into the dear walled garden, and paced up and down in the moonlight.

Yes, there was something fragrant here, something that infected the soul, something of old faiths and old holy aspirations, a murmur and a perfume of trust and love. There might be gossip, trickling jealousies in this little world, mean actions, even, perhaps, ugly desires and ugly fulfilments of desire. Rosamund scarcely noticed, or did not notice, these things. With her people were at their best. That night, when Beattie was going to bed, Rosamund had said to her:

"I can't think why Mrs. Dickinson is called 'the cold douche.' I find her so warm-hearted and so amusing!"

And so it was with them all. Rosamund had the magic touch which drew the best out of every one in Welsley, because she was happy there, and sincerely loved the place.

"How can I leave Welsley?" she thought now, as she walked up and down in the garden, and heard presently the chiming of midnight and the voice of the watchman beyond the Dark Entry. God seemed very near to her in Welsley, God and the happiness of God. In Welsley she felt, or was beginning to feel, that she was almost able to combine two lives, the life she had grasped and the life she had let go. Here she was a mother and at moments she was almost a religious too. She played with her boy, she trained him, watched over his small body and his increasing soul; and she meditated between the enclosing walls, listening to bells and floating praises, to the Dresden Amen, and to the organ with its many voices all dedicated to the service of God. Often, when she walked alone in the garden, or sat alone in some hidden corner under the mossy walls, she felt like a nun who had given up the world forever, and had found the true life in God. In imagination, then, she lived the life of which she had dreamed as a girl before any man had brought her his love.

She could never, even in imagination, live that life truly, without effort, in London. Welsley had made her almost hate London. She did not know how she would be able to bear the return to it. Yet, if Canon Wilton were right in what he had said to her that afternoon, Dion might come back very soon, and therefore very soon she might have to leave Welsley.

No. 5 Little Market Street once more; vaporous Westminster leaning to the dark river!

Rosamund sighed deeply as she looked up again to the towers, and the moon, and turned to go into Little Cloisters. It was difficult to shut out such a night; it would be more difficult to give up the long meditations, the dreams that came in this sweet retirement sheltered by the house of God.

* * * * *

Two days later, at breakfast-time, Rosamund received the following letter, written on paper scented with "Wood violet":

"HOTEL PALACE-BY-THE-SEA, BOURNEMOUTH, Thursday

"MY DEAR MRS. LEITH,—I have received your two—or is it three?—charming letters recently written, suggesting a renewal of the lease of Little Cloisters beyond September. At first I hesitated. The atmosphere of a Cathedral town naturally attracts me and recalls sweet memories of the past. On the other hand the life of a well-managed hotel, such as this is not without its agrements. Frivolous it may be (though not light); comfortable and restful it undoubtedly is. The against and the for in a nutshell as it were! Your last letter, in which you dwell on the dampness inevitable in old houses, and quote the Bishop's opinion, would, I think, have left me undisturbed in mind—I have recently taken up the 'new mind' cult, which is, of course, not antagonistic to our cherished Anglican beliefs—had it not happened to coincide with more than a touch of bronchial asthma. The Bishop (quite between you and me!) though a very dear man and a very good Christian, is not a person of great intellect. My husband would never enter into controversy with him, as he said it was useless to strive in argument with a mind not sure of its bearings! An opinion of the Bishop's would not, therefore, weigh much with me. But there is an element of truth in the contention as to the damp. Old houses are damp at times. Little Cloisters, placed as it is in the shadow of the Cathedral, doubtless suffers in some degree from this defect. My doctor here,—such a clever man!—though very reluctant to prevent me from returning home, confessed to-day that he thought my case needed careful watching by some one who knew. Now (between you and me), nobody knows in Welsley, and therefore, after weighing pros and cons, and undergoing an hour of mental treatment—merely the silent encouragement and purification of the will—by an expert here, I have decided to remain for the winter. I am willing, therefore, to extend your lease for another six months on the terms as before. Perhaps you will kindly visit my solicitor, Mr. Collingwood of Cattle Market Lane,—but you are sure to know his address!—who will arrange everything legally with you.—With my kindest regards and all good wishes, believe me, dear Mrs. Leith, always sincerely yours,

"IMOGENE DUNCAN BROWNING."

It was Beattie's last morning at Little Cloisters; she had settled to go back to De Lorne Gardens in the afternoon of that day. Rosamund read Mrs. Browning's letter sitting opposite to her sister at the breakfast-table in the small, paneled dining-room. At the same time Beattie was reading a letter from Guy. As she finished it she looked up and said:

"Anything interesting?"

"What does Guy say?" replied Rosamund. "Oh, here's a letter from godfather! Perhaps he's coming down."

Rather hastily she tore open another envelope.

Later on in the morning, when Beattie was doing mysterious things in the garden with Robin, Rosamund slipped out alone and made her way to Cattle Market Lane. She came back just before lunch, looking unusually preoccupied.

The day after Beattie had returned to London, a note from Rosamund told her that the lease of Little Cloisters had been renewed for another six months, till the end of March, 1901.

"And if old Dion comes back in the meanwhile, as I fully expect he will?" said Guy, when Beattie told him of Rosamund's note.

"I suppose it is possible to sublet a house," said Beattie, looking unusually inexpressive, Guy thought.

"They say at the Clubs the C.I.V. will be back before Christmas, Beattie," said Guy.

"The Tenbys' lease of Number 5 is up."

"Yes, but do you think Dion can afford to run two houses?"

"Perhaps——" she stopped.

"I don't believe Rosamund will ever be got out of Welsley," said Guy. "And I'm pretty sure you agree with me."

"I must go now," said Beattie gently. "I'm going to Queen Anne's Mansions to tell the dear mother all about my visit to Welsley."

"When is she going there?"

"I don't know. She's very lazy about moving. She's not been out of London since Dion sailed."

"I think she's the most delicate mother-in-law—I don't mean physically—who has ever been born in the world."

Beattie looked down, and in a moment went out of the room without saying anything more.

"Darling Beattie," murmured Guy, looking after his wife. "How she bears her great disappointment."

For Beattie's sake far more than for his own he longed to have a child in his home, a child of hers and his. But that would never be. And so Beattie gave all the mother-love that was in her to Robin, but much of it secretly. Guy knew that, and believed he knew the secret of her reticence even with Robin. She loved Robin, as it were, from a distance; only his mother must love him cheek to cheek, lips to lips, heart to heart, and his father as men love the sons they think of as the bravery and strength of the future.

But even Guy did not know how much his wife loved Robin, how many buried hopes and dreams stirred in their graves when Robin threw himself impulsively into her arms and confidentially hung on her neck and informed her of the many important details of his life. No man knows all that a certain type of woman is able to feel about a child.

When Rosamund had arranged about the renewal of the lease, she tried to feel the joy which was evidently felt by all her Welsley friends—with one exception which, however, she either did not notice or did not seem to notice. They were frankly delighted and enthusiastic at the prospect of keeping her among them. She was very grateful for their affection, so eagerly shown, but somehow, although she had signed her name in a solicitor's office, and her signature had been witnessed by a neat young man with a neat bald head, she did not feel quite at ease. She found herself looking at "my Welsley" with the anxiously loving eyes of one who gathers in dear details before it is too late for such garnering; she sat in the garden and listened to the beloved sounds from the Cathedral with strained attention, like one who sets memory at its mysterious task.

The Dean's widow had yielded to the suggestion of inevitable dampness in old houses, but——!

On September 28, towards evening, when Rosamund was in the garden with Robin, Annie, the parlor-maid, came out holding a salver on which lay a telegram. Rosamund opened it and read:

"Coming home.—DION."

"Any answer, ma'am?"

* * * * *

"Is there any answer, ma'am? Shall I tell the boy to wait?"

"What did you say, Annie?"

"Shall I tell the boy to wait, ma'am?"

"No, thank you, Annie. There's no answer."

Annie turned and recrossed the garden, looking careful, as if she were thinking of her cap, round which the airs were blowing.

Rosamund sat for a few minutes almost motionless, with the slip of paper lying in her lap; then the breeze came lightly, as if curious, and blew it away. Robin saw it and ran.

"I'll catch it, mummie. You see! I'll catch it!"

The little brown legs were amazingly swift, but the telegram was elusive because the breeze was naughty. When Robin ran up to his mother holding it out he was almost breathless.

"Here it is, mummie."

His blue eyes and his voice held triumph.

"I said I would, and I did!"

Rosamund put her arm round him.

"Who do you think sent this?"

"I dunno."

"Daddy sent it."

Robin's eyes became round.

"Daddy! What for?"

"To tell us he's coming home."

A deeply serious expression came to Robin's face.

"Have I growed much?"

"Yes, a great deal."

"Will daddy see it?"

"Yes, I'm sure he will directly he comes."

Robin seemed relieved.

"Is daddy coming here?"

"Yes."

"Is he goin' to live here with us?"

"We shall see about all that when he comes."

Annie, evidently still thinking about her cap, reappeared on the garden path.

"The Dean to see you, ma'am."

Rosamund got up, gave Robin a long kiss on the freckles and said:

"Robin, I believe the Dean has come about Mr. Thrush."

"Does he know Mr. Thrush?"

"Not yet. I'll tell you something presently."

And she went slowly into the house. Was a scheme of hers coming to fruition just when——? She tried to close her mind to an approaching thought.



CHAPTER V

On the 7th of October the C.I.V. sailed from South Africa for England, on the 19th of October they made St. Vincent; on the 23rd Dion again looked over the sea at the dreaming hills of Madeira. The sight of these hills made him realize the change brought about in him by the work he had done in South Africa. As he gazed at them he suddenly and sharply remembered the man who had gazed at them nine months before, a man who was gathering together determination, who was silently making preparations for progress, or for what he thought of as progress. Those hills then had seemed to be calling to him out of the mists of heat, and to himself he had seemed to be defying them, to be thrusting their voices from him. For were they not the hills of a land where the lotus bloomed, where a weariness bred of stagnant delights wrapped men in a garment of Nessus, steeped in a subtle poison which drew from them all their energies, which brought them not pain but an inertia more deadly to the soul than pain? Now they had no power over him. He did not need to defy them, because he had gained in strength. Ere they vanished from his eyes over the sea he remembered another Island rising out of waters that gleamed with gold. How far off now seemed to him that evening when he had looked on it as he traveled to Greece! How much he had left behind on the way of his life!

The experience of separation and of war had not aged him, but it had made him feel older. Nothing of the boy was left in him. He felt himself of manhood all compact. He had seen men die, had seen how they were able to die, how they met severe physical suffering; he had silently tried to prepare himself for death, keeping a cheerful countenance; he had known, like most brave men, the cold companionship of fear, and he had got rid of that companionship. Knowing death better, he knew life much better than when he had left England.

On the voyage out he had looked at the hills of Madeira with Worthington. Now Worthington was not with him; he had died of enteric at Pretoria in September. Dion was carrying back to England Worthington's last written message to his people. He was carrying also another letter written by an English officer, whose body lay in the earth of Africa, to a woman at home. On the voyage Dion often thought of that dead man and of the living woman to whom he would presently give the letter. He had promised to deliver it personally.

At St. Vincent he had received a welcome by cable from Rosamund, and had sent a cable to her asking not to be met. He wished to meet her in her home at Welsley. She had written to him enthusiastic accounts of its peace and beauty. Her pen had been tipped with love of it. Their first meeting, their reunion, must take place there in the midst of that wonderful peace of green England which she loved so much. After the heat and the dust and the pain of South Africa that would surely be very good.

Their reunion!

Dion had escaped death. He had been allowed to return to Rosamund in splendid health, without a wound, though he had been in battle. He had a strong presentiment that he was allowed to return for some definite purpose. Could he not now be of far more use to his little son than if he had never volunteered for active service? Rosamund and he had looked up together at the columns of the Parthenon and had thought of the child who might come. Dion felt that he understood the Parthenon better now that he had looked death in the face, now that he had been ready to give up his life if it had been required of him. He even had a whimsical feeling—he smiled at it seriously to himself—that the Parthenon, if he again stood before it, would understand him better. He was not proud of himself for what he had done. But in the depths of him he often felt earnestly glad, almost thankful, that he had been able to do it. The doing of it had brought a new zest into life, new meanings, a new outlook. He seemed to feel life like something precious in his hand now; he had not felt it so before, even when he had won Rosamund and had been with her in Greece.

* * * * *

The hills of Madeira faded. Three days later there was a burial at sea in the early morning. A private, who had been ill with enteric, had died in the night. The body sank into the depths, the ship went on her way and ran into a stiff gale. Already England was rousing herself to welcome her returning sons, bruskly but lustily, in her way, which was not South Africa's way. Dion loved that gale though it kept him awake all night.

Next morning they were off the Start, and heard the voices of the sirens bidding them good day.

* * * * *

On the last day of October, at about four o'clock in the afternoon, Rosamund was waiting for Dion. He was due by the express which, when up to time, reached Welsley Station at 3.55. She would naturally have been at the station to meet him if she had not received a telegram from him begging her to stay at home.

"Would much rather meet you first in Little Cloisters,—Dion," were the last words of the telegram.

So Rosamund had stayed at home.

It was a peculiarly still autumn afternoon. A suggestion—it was scarcely more than that—of mist made the Precincts look delicately sad, but not to the eyes of Rosamund. She delighted in this season of tawny colors and of fluttering leaves, of nature's wide-eyed and contemplative muteness. The beauty of autumn appealed to her because she possessed a happy spirit, and was not too imaginative. She had imagination, but it was not of the intensely sensitive and poetic kind which dies with the dying leaves, and in the mists loses all the hopes that were born with the birth of summer. The strong sanity which marked her, and which had always kept her in central paths, far away from the byways in which the neurotic, the decadent, the searchers after the so-called "new" things loved to tread, led her to welcome each season in is turn, and to rejoice in its special characteristics.

So she loved the cloistral feeling autumn brought with it to Welsley. Green summer seemed to open the doors, and one rejoiced in a golden freedom; tawny autumn seemed softly to close the doors, and one was happy in a sensation of being tenderly guarded, of being kept very safe in charge for the coming winter with its fires, and its cosy joys of the interior.

Another reason which made Rosamund care very much for the autumn was this: in the autumn the religious atmosphere which hung about the Precincts of Welsley seemed to her to become more definite, more touching, the ancient things more living and powerful in their message.

"Welsley always sends out influences," she had once said to Father Robertson. "But in certain autumn days it speaks. I hear its voice in the autumn."

She heard its voice now as she waited for Dion.

The lattice window which gave on to the garden was partly open; there was a fire in the wide, old-fashioned grate; vases holding chrysanthemums stood on the high wood mantelpiece and on the writing-table; the tea-table had been placed by Annie near the hearth.

Rosamund listened to the cloistral silence, and looked at two deep, old-fashioned arm-chairs which were drawn up by the tea-table.

Just how much had she missed Dion?

That question had suddenly sprung up in her mind as she looked at the two arm-chairs.

The first time she had been in Little Cloisters she had spoken to Canon Wilton of Dion, had wondered if he would come back from South Africa altered; and she had said that if she came to live in it Welsley might alter her. Canon Wilton had made no comment on her remark. She had scarcely noticed that at the time, perhaps had not consciously noticed it; but her subconscious mind had recorded the fact, and she recalled it now.

Welsley, she thought, had changed her a good deal. She was not a self-conscious woman as a rule, but to-day was not like other days, and she was not quite like herself on other days. Perhaps, for once, she was what women often call "strung up"; certainly she felt peculiarly alive—alive specially in the nerves of her body.

Those two arm-chairs were talking to her; they were telling her of the imminent renewal of the life closely companioned, watched over, protected, beloved. They were telling, and they were asking, too. She felt absurdly that it was they who were asking how much she had missed Dion.

It would be good to have him back, but she now suddenly realized, in a self-conscious way, that she had managed to be very happy without him. But then she had always looked forward to his eventual return. Suppose he had not come back?

She got up restlessly, went to the window and looked out into the garden. Robin was not there, nor was he in the house. Obedient to an impulse which she had not understood at the time, Rosamund had arranged a small, and rather odd, festivity for him which had taken him away from home, and would keep him out till five o'clock: he was having tea in a cake-shop near the top of Wesley High Street with his nurse and Mr. Thrush, who, not unexpectedly, had arrived in Welsley. The first meeting between his father and mother would not be complicated by his eager young presence.

So the garden was empty to-day. Not even the big young gardener was to be seen; he only came on four days in the week, and this was not one of them. As Rosamund looked down into the garden, she loved its loneliness, its misty, autumnal aspect. It was surely not her fault if she had a natural affection for solitude—not for the hideous solitude of a childless mother, but for the frequent privacy of a mother who was alone, but who knew that her child was near, playing perhaps, or gone for a little jaunt with his faithful nurse, or sleeping upstairs.

As she looked at the garden a faint creeping sense of something almost like fear came to her. Since Dion had been away she had surely altered, because she had had a new experience; she had, as it were, touched the confines of that life which she had deliberately renounced when she had married.

It seemed to her, as she stood there and remembered her long meditations in that enclosed and ancient garden, that in these months she had drawn much nearer to God, and—could it be because of that?—perhaps had receded a little from her husband.

The sense of uneasiness—she could not call it fear—deepened in her. Was the receding then implicit in the drawing near? She began to feel almost confused. She put up a hand to her face; her cheek was hot.

The clock in the room struck four; two minutes later the chimes sounded, and then Big John announced the hour.

Dion might arrive at any moment now. She turned away rather quickly from the window. She hated the unusual feeling of self-consciousness which had come to her.

At ten minutes past four the door bell rang. It must be he. She went to the drawing-room door, opened it and listened. She heard a man's voice and a bump; then another bump, a creaking, a sort of scraping, and the voice once more saying, "I'll manage, miss."

It was Dion's luggage. Harrington's man explained that the gentleman had said he would walk to Little Cloisters.

Rosamund went back into the drawing-room and shut the door. Now that Dion's luggage was actually in the house everything seemed curiously different. A period was definitely over; her loneliness with Robin in Little Cloisters was at an end. She sat down in one of the two arm-chairs by the tea-table, clasped her hands together and looked at the fire.

If she had held to her girlish idea? If she had become a "Sister"? But—she shook her head as she sat there alone—Robin! And then she sighed; she had not thought, "But—Dion!" She was almost angry with herself for being so introspective, so mentally observant of herself. All this was surely unnatural in her. Was she going to become morbid—she who had such a hatred of morbidity? She tried to force herself to feel that she had missed Dion tremendously, that his return would make things right in Little Cloisters.

But had they ever been wrong? And, besides, Little Cloisters would almost immediately be only a dear memory of the past.

Rosamund began almost to hate herself. Was she capable of any sort of treachery? Swiftly she began to dwell upon all the dear goodness of Dion, upon his love, his admiration, his perpetual thoughtfulness, his unselfishness, his straight purity, his chivalry, his unceasing devotion. He was a man to trust implicitly. That was enough. She trusted him and loved him. She thanked God that he was back in England. She had missed him more, much more than she had realized; she was quite sure of that now that she had recalled things. One happiness is apt to oust the acute memory of another. That had (quite naturally) happened in her case. It would indeed have been strange if, living in such a dear place as "My Welsley," with Robin the precious one, she had been a miserable woman! And she had always known—as women know things they do not know—that Dion would come back after behaving nobly. And that was exactly what had happened.

She looked at the arm-chair opposite.

How splendid it would be to see dear, brave, good, faithful Dion sitting in it in a moment, safe after all his hardships and dangers, comfortable, able to rest at last in his own home.

For Little Cloisters would be his home even if only for a few days. And then——What about Mr. Thrush? What about—oh, so many things?

"I'll find the way all right," Dion had said at the station, after he had been assured that it was only ten minutes' walk, "or so," to Little Cloisters.

The little walk would be a preparation for the very great event. He only knew how great it was when he got out at the Welsley Station.

He had never seen Welsley before, though its fame had been familiar to him from childhood. Thousands of pilgrims had piously visited it, coming from afar; now yet another pilgrim had come from afar, sensitively eager to approach a shrine which held something desired by his soul.

That part of the city which immediately surrounded the station was not attractive, but very soon Dion came into a narrow street and was aware of an ancient flavor, wholly English, and only to be savored thoroughly by an English palate. In this street he began to taste England. He passed an old curiosity shop, black and white, with a projecting upper storey, lattice windows with tiny panes, a door of black oak upon which many people had carved their names. By the door stood a spinning-wheel. In the window were a tea service of spode and a collection of luster ware. There were also some Toby jugs.

Dion went in quickly and bought one for Robin. He carried it unwrapped in his hand as he walked on. One could do that here, in this intimate, cozy old town of dear England. He enjoyed the light mist, the moisture in the air. He had come to hate aridity and the acrid dryness of dust blown by hot winds across great spaces. The moisture caressed his skin, burnt almost to the color of copper by the African sun.

He came into the High Street. On its farther side, straight in front of him, the narrowest street he had ever seen, a rivulet of a street, with leaning houses which nearly formed an arcade, stretched to a wonderful gray gateway, immensely massive, with towers at its corners, and rows of shields above its beetling archway.

This must be the entrance to the Precincts.

In the tiny street he met a verger in mufti, an old bent man, with a chin-beard and knotty hands, English in every vein, in every sinew of his amazingly respectable and venerable body. This worthy he stopped and inquired of him the way to Little Cloisters.

"Where Mrs. Leith and her boy lives, sir?" mouthed the old man, with a kindly gaping smile.

"That's it."

"She's a nice lady," said the verger. "We think a lot of her here, especially we Cathedral folk."

He went on to explain elaborately where Little Cloisters was, and to describe minutely two routes, by either of which it might be come at. It was evident that he was one of those who love to listen to themselves and who take a pride in words.

Dion decided for the route "round at the back" by Chantrey Lane, through the Green Court, leaving the Deanery on the left and the Bishop's Palace on the right, and so by way of the Prior's Gate and the ruins of the Infirmary through the Dark Entry to Little Cloisters.

"You can't miss it. The name's writ on the door in the wall, and a rare old wall it is," said the venerable man.

Dion thanked him warmly and walked on, while the verger looked after him.

"I shouldn't wonder if that's Mrs. Leith's husband home from the war," he murmured. "Looks as if he'd been fighting, he does, and burnt pretty near to a cinder by something, the sun as like as not."

And he walked on down the tiny street towards the muffin which awaited him at home, well pleased with his perspicuity, and making mental preparations for the astonishing of his wife with a tidbit of news.

Dion came into the Green Court, and immediately felt Welsley, felt it in the depths of him, and understood Rosamund's love of it so often expressed in her letters. As he looked at the moist green lawn in the center, at the gray and brown houses which fronted it, at the Deanery garden full of the ruddy flowers of autumn behind the iron railings, at the immense Cathedral with its massive and yet almost tenderly graceful towers, a history in stone of the faithful work and the progress of men, he knew why Rosamund had come to live here. He stood still. In the misty air he heard the voices of the rooks. The door of a Canon's house opened, and two clergymen, one of them in gaiters and a shovel hat, came out, and walked slowly away in earnest conversation. Bells sounded in one of the towers.

He understood. Here was a sort of essence of ecclesiasticism. It seemed to penetrate the whole atmosphere. Rosamund was at home in it.

He remembered his terrible thought that God had always stood between his wife and him, dividing them.

How would it be now?

Again he looked up at the great house of God, and he felt almost afraid. But he was not the man he had been when he said good-by to Rosamund; he had gained in force of character, and he knew it. Surely out there in South Africa, he had done what his mother had wanted him to do, he had laid hold of his best possibilities. At any rate, he had sincerely tried to do that. Why, then, should he be afraid—and of God?

He walked on quickly, and came to Little Cloisters by way of the Dark Entry.

It was very dark that day, for the autumn evening was already making its moist presence felt, and there was a breathing of cold from the old gray stones which looked like the fangs of Time.

Dion shook his broad shoulders in an irresistible shiver as he came out into the passage-way between Rosamund's garden wall and the ruined cloisters, immediately beyond which rose the east end of the Cathedral. South Africa had evidently made him sensitive to the dampness and cold of England.

"Little Cloisters." The white words showed on a tall green door let into the wall on his left; and, as the verger had said, it was a rare old wall. So here it actually was! He was at home. His heart thumped as he pulled at the bell, and unconsciously he gripped the Toby jug hard with his other hand.



CHAPTER VI

"Dion! Is it you at last?"

A warm voice called from above, and the blood rushed to his temples.

"Yes."

It seemed to him that he took the old staircase in his stride, and he had a feeling almost such as a man has when he is going into action.

"Rose!"

He held her in his arms and kissed her.

"It's—seemed a long time!"

He felt moisture springing to his eyes. The love he felt for her almost overwhelmed his self-control. Till this moment he had never known how great it was. All his deprivation was in that embrace.

"Years it's seemed!" he said, letting her go with a little laugh, summoned up—he did not know how—to save him from too much emotion.

She gazed at him.

"Oh, Dion, how you have altered!"

"Have I?"

"Tremendously."

How well he knew the kindly glance of her honest brown eyes; a thousand times he had called it up before him in South Africa. But this was not the glance so characteristic of her. In the firelit room her eyes looked puzzled, almost wide, with a sort of startled astonishment.

"You had a lot of the boy in you still when you went away. At least, I used to think so."

"Haven't I any left?"

"I can't see any. No, I think you've come back all man. And how tremendously burnt you are."

"Almost black, I suppose. But I'm so accustomed to it."

"It's right," she said. "Your face tells the story of what you've done. Robin"—she paused, then slowly she said—"Robin's got almost a new father."

"Where is he? He's sure to have altered more than I have."

"Oh no. He'll be in about five. I've sent him out to tea with some one you know."

"With whom?"

"Mr. Thrush."

"Mr. Thrush at Welsley?"

"Yes. I'll explain all that presently. I thought I'd have you all to myself for half an hour, and then Robin should have his turn. Here comes Annie."

When the two arm-chairs were occupied, Dion said:

"And you, Rosamund?"

"What about me?"

"Haven't you altered?"

"If I have, probably you would know it and I shouldn't."

"Yes, I dare say that's true. You aren't conscious of it, then?"

But she was giving him his tea, and that took her mind away from his question, no doubt. He felt a change in her, but it was not almost fiercely marked like the change in him, on whom a Continent had written with its sun and its wind, and with its battlefields. The body of a man was graven by such a superscription. And no doubt even a child could read something of it. But the writing on Rosamund was much fainter, was far less easy to decipher; it was perhaps traced on the soul rather than on the body. The new legend of Dion was perhaps an assertion. But this story of Rosamund, what was it? She saw the man in Dion, lean, burnt, strong, ardent, desirous, full of suppressed emotion that was warmly and intensely human; he saw in her, as well as the mother, something that was perhaps almost pale, almost elusive, like the still figure and downbent face of a recluse seen in passing an open window.