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.