“Dion writes that no one out there has any idea when the war will end.”

“Probably not.  But the C.I.V. mayn’t be needed all through the war.  Most of them are busy men who’ve given up a great deal out of sheer patriotism.  Fine fellows!  They’ve done admirable work, and the War Office may decide that they’ve done enough.  Things out there have taken a great turn since Roberts and Kitchener went out.  The C.I.V. may come marching home long before peace is declared.”

He spoke with a certain pressure, a certain intensity, and his eyes never left Rosamund’s face.

“I’m glad my Dion’s one of them,” she said.  “And Robin will be glad, too, some day.”

She said nothing more about Mrs. Browning and Little Cloisters.  But when Canon Wilton had gone she said to her sister: 

“Beattie, does it ever strike you that Canon Wilton’s rather abrupt and unexpected sometimes in what he says?”

“He doesn’t beat about the bush,” replied Beatrice.  “Do you mean that?”

“Perhaps I do.  Now I’m going down to Robin.  How strong he’s getting here!  Hark at his voice!  Can’t you hear even in his voice how much good Welsley had done him?”

Robin’s determined treble was audible as he piped out: 

“Oh no, Fipper!  Not by the Bish’s wall!  Why, I say, the slugs always comes there.  They do, weally!  You come and see!  Come quick!  I’ll show——­”

The voice faded in the direction of the Palace.

“I must go down and see if it’s true about the slugs,” exclaimed Rosamund.

And with beaming eyes she hastened out of the room.

Beatrice looked after her and sighed.  Dion’s last letter from South Africa was lying on the writing-table close to her.  Rosamund had already given it to her to read.  Now she took it up and read it carefully again.  The doves cooed in the cloisters; the bells chimed in the tower; the mellow sunshine—­already the sunshine not of full summer, but of the dawning autumn, with its golden presage of days not golden, and of nights heavy with dews and laden with floating leaves,—­came in through the lattice, and lay over her soft and wistful melancholy, as she read of hardship, and dust, and blood and death, told truthfully, but always cheerfully, as a soldier tells a thing to a woman he loves and wishes to be sincere with.

Dion was not in the peace.  Dear Rosamund!  Did she quite realize?  And then Beattie pulled herself up.  A disloyal thought surely leaves a stain on the mind through which it passes.  Beattie did not want to have a stain on her mind.  She cared for it as a delicately refined woman cares for her body, bathing it every day.

She put Dion’s letter down.