“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.