In the evening, when Robin was asleep, Dion had said good-by to Rosamund.  The catastrophe of the tower of bricks had haunted his mind.  As he had chosen to make of the tower an omen, in its destruction he had found a presage of evil which depressed him, which even woke in him ugly fears of the future.  He had had a great deal out of life, not all he had wanted, but still a great deal.  Perhaps he was not going to have much more.  He had not spoken of his fears to Rosamund, but had been resolutely cheerful with her in their last conversation.  Neither of them had mentioned the possibility of his not coming back.  They had talked of what probably lay before him in South Africa, and of Robin, and presently Rosamund had said: 

“I want to make a suggestion.  Will you promise to tell me if you dislike it?”

“Yes.  What is it?”

“Would you mind if I succeeded in letting this house and went into the country with Robin to wait for your coming back?”

“Letting it furnished, do you mean?”

“Yes.”

“But won’t you be dull in the country, away from mother, and Beattie, and godfather, and all our friends?”

“I could never be dull with Robin and nature, never, and I wouldn’t go very far from London.  I thought of something near Welsley.”

“So that you could go in to Cathedral service when ‘The Wilderness’ was sung!”

He had smiled as he had said it, but his own reference to Rosamund’s once-spoken-of love of the wilderness had, in a flash, brought the hill of Drouva before him, and he had faced man’s tragedy—­remembered joys of the past in a shadowed present.

“Go into the country, Rose.  I only want you to be happy, but”—­he had hesitated, and then had added, almost in spite of himself—­“but not too happy.”

Not too happy!  That really was the great fear at his heart now that he was voyaging towards South Africa, that Rosamund would be too happy without him.  He no longer deceived himself.  This drastic change in his life had either taught him to face realities, or simply prevented him from being able to do anything else.  He told himself the truth, and it was this, that Rosamund did not love him at all as he loved her.  She was fond of him, she trusted him, she got on excellently with him, she believed in him, she even admired him for having been able to live as he had lived before their marriage, but she did not passionately love him.  He might have been tempted to think that, with all her fine, even splendid, qualities, she was deprived of the power of loving intensely if he had not seen her with Robin, if he had not once spoken with her about her mother.