“How can I leave Welsley?” she thought now, as she walked up and down in the garden, and heard presently the chiming of midnight and the voice of the watchman beyond the Dark Entry.  God seemed very near to her in Welsley, God and the happiness of God.  In Welsley she felt, or was beginning to feel, that she was almost able to combine two lives, the life she had grasped and the life she had let go.  Here she was a mother and at moments she was almost a religious too.  She played with her boy, she trained him, watched over his small body and his increasing soul; and she meditated between the enclosing walls, listening to bells and floating praises, to the Dresden Amen, and to the organ with its many voices all dedicated to the service of God.  Often, when she walked alone in the garden, or sat alone in some hidden corner under the mossy walls, she felt like a nun who had given up the world forever, and had found the true life in God.  In imagination, then, she lived the life of which she had dreamed as a girl before any man had brought her his love.

She could never, even in imagination, live that life truly, without effort, in London.  Welsley had made her almost hate London.  She did not know how she would be able to bear the return to it.  Yet, if Canon Wilton were right in what he had said to her that afternoon, Dion might come back very soon, and therefore very soon she might have to leave Welsley.

No. 5 Little Market Street once more; vaporous Westminster leaning to the dark river!

Rosamund sighed deeply as she looked up again to the towers, and the moon, and turned to go into Little Cloisters.  It was difficult to shut out such a night; it would be more difficult to give up the long meditations, the dreams that came in this sweet retirement sheltered by the house of God.

* * * * *

Two days later, at breakfast-time, Rosamund received the following letter, written on paper scented with “Wood violet”: 

“HOTEL PALACE-BY-THE-SEA, BOURNEMOUTH, Thursday

“MY DEAR MRS. LEITH,—­I have received your two—­or is it three?—­charming letters recently written, suggesting a renewal of the lease of Little Cloisters beyond September.  At first I hesitated.  The atmosphere of a Cathedral town naturally attracts me and recalls sweet memories of the past.  On the other hand the life of a well-managed hotel, such as this is not without its agrements.  Frivolous it may be (though not light); comfortable and restful it undoubtedly is.  The against and the for in a nutshell as it were!  Your last letter, in which you dwell on the dampness inevitable in old houses, and quote the Bishop’s opinion, would, I think, have left me undisturbed in mind—­I have recently taken up the ‘new mind’ cult, which is, of course, not antagonistic to our cherished Anglican beliefs—­had it not happened to coincide with more than a touch of bronchial asthma.