Robin was going to have his mother all to himself, and Rosamund was going to have her little son all to herself.  But they did not know that yet.  The long months of their sacred companionship stretched out before the father as he listened to the lullaby, which he could only just hear.  Rosamund had mastered the art of withdrawing her voice and yet keeping it perfectly level.

When the song was finished, whispered away into the spaces where music disperses to carry on its sweet mission, Dion went up the stairs, opened the door of Rosamund’s room, and saw something very simple, and, to him, very memorable.  Rosamund had turned on the music-stool and put her right arm round Robin, who, in his minute green jersey and green knickerbockers, stood leaning against her with the languid happiness and half-wayward demeanor of a child who has been playing, and who already feels the soothing influence of approaching night with its gift of profound sleep.  Robin’s cheeks were flushed, and in his blue eyes there was a curious expression, drowsily imaginative, as if he were welcoming dreams which were only for him.  With a faint smile on his small rosy lips he was listening while Rosamund repeated to him in English the words of the song she had just been singing.  Dion heard her say: 

     “Sink to slumber, good-night,
     And angels of light
     With love you shall fold
     As the Christ Child of old.”

“There’s Fa!” whispered Robin, sending to Dion a semi-roguish look.

Dion held up his hand and formed “Hush!” with his lips.  Rosamund finished the verse: 

     “While the stars dimly shine
     May no sorrow be thine.”

She bent and kissed Robin on the top of his head just in the middle, choosing the place, and into his hair she breathed a repetition of the last words, “May no sorrow be thine.”

And Dion was going to the war.

Robin slipped from his mother’s arm gently and came to his father.

“’Allo, Fa!” he observed confidentially.

Dion bent down.

“Hallo, Robin!”

He picked the little chap up and gave him a kiss.  What a small bundle of contentment Robin was at that moment.  In South Africa Dion often remembered just how Robin had felt to him then, intimate and a mystery, confidential, sleepy with happiness, a tiny holder of the Divine, a willing revelation and a soft secret.  So much in so little!

“You’ve been playing with Aunt Beattie.”

Robin acknowledged it.

“Auntie’s putty good at bricks.”

“Did you meet Beattie, Dion?” asked Rosamund.

“On the doorstep.”

He thought of Beattie’s question.  There was no question in Rosamund’s face.  But perhaps his own face had changed.

A tap came to the door.

“Master Robin?” said nurse, in a voice that held both inquiry and an admonishing sound.

When Robin had gone off to bed, walking vaguely and full of the forerunners of dreams, Dion knew that his hour had come.  He felt a sort of great stillness within him, stillness of presage, perhaps, or of mere concentration, of the will to be, to do, to endure, whatever came.  Rosamund shut down the lid of the piano and came away from the music-stool.  Dion looked at her, and thought of the maidens of the porch and of the columns of the Parthenon.