Strangely, perhaps, he was almost glad when the ship cast off and the shores of England faded and presently were lost beyond the horizon line.  He was alone now with his duty.  Life was suddenly simplified.  It was better so.  In the last days he had often felt confused, beset, had often felt that he was struggling in a sea of complications which threatened to overwhelm him.  There had been too much to do and there had been too much to endure; he had been obliged to be practical when he was feeling intensely emotional.  The effort to dominate and to conceal his emotion had sometimes almost exhausted him in the midst of all he had had to do.  He had come to the knowledge of the fact that it is the work of the spirit which leaves the whole man tired.  He was weary, not from hard energies connected with his new profession, not from getting up at dawn, marching through dense crowds of cheering countrymen, traveling, settling in on shipboard, but from farewells.  He looked back now upon a sort of panorama of farewells, of partings from his mother, his uncle, Bruce Evelin, Guy, Beatrice, Robin, Rosamund.

Quite possibly all these human companions had vanished out of his life for ever.  It was a tremendous thought, upon which he was resolved not to dwell lest his courage and his energies might be weakened.

Through good-bys a man may come to knowledge, and Dion had, in these last few days, gone down to the bedrock of knowledge concerning some of those few who were intimately in his life—­knowledge of them and also of himself.  Nobody had traveled to Southampton to see him off.  He had a very English horror of scenes, and had said all his good-bys in private.  With Bruce Evelin he had had a long talk; they had spoken frankly together about the future of Rosamund and Robin in the event of his not coming back.  Dion had expressed his views on the bringing up of the boy, and, in doing so had let Bruce Evelin into secrets of Greece.  The father did not expect, perhaps did not even desire, that the little son should develop into a paragon, but he did desire for Rosamund’s child the strong soul in the strong body, and the soft heart that was not a softy’s heart.

In that conversation Bruce Evelin had learnt a great deal about Dion.  They had spoken of Rosamund, perhaps more intimately than they had ever spoken before, and Dion had said, “I’m bothering so much about Robin partly because her life is bound up with Robin’s.”

“Several lives are bound up with that little chap’s,” Bruce Evelin had said.

And a sudden sense of loneliness had come upon Dion.  But he had only made some apparently casual remark to the effect that he knew Bruce Evelin would do his best to see that Robin came to no harm.  No absurd and unnecessary promises had been exchanged between the old and the young man.  Their talk had been British, often seemingly casual, and nearly always touched with deep feeling.  It had not opened to Dion new vistas of Bruce Evelin.  For a long time Dion had felt that he knew Bruce Evelin.  But it had given him a definite revelation of the strong faithfulness, the tenacity of faithfulness in friendship, which was perhaps the keynote of Bruce Evelin’s character.