And he walked on down the tiny street towards the muffin which awaited him at home, well pleased with his perspicuity, and making mental preparations for the astonishing of his wife with a tidbit of news.

Dion came into the Green Court, and immediately felt Welsley, felt it in the depths of him, and understood Rosamund’s love of it so often expressed in her letters.  As he looked at the moist green lawn in the center, at the gray and brown houses which fronted it, at the Deanery garden full of the ruddy flowers of autumn behind the iron railings, at the immense Cathedral with its massive and yet almost tenderly graceful towers, a history in stone of the faithful work and the progress of men, he knew why Rosamund had come to live here.  He stood still.  In the misty air he heard the voices of the rooks.  The door of a Canon’s house opened, and two clergymen, one of them in gaiters and a shovel hat, came out, and walked slowly away in earnest conversation.  Bells sounded in one of the towers.

He understood.  Here was a sort of essence of ecclesiasticism.  It seemed to penetrate the whole atmosphere.  Rosamund was at home in it.

He remembered his terrible thought that God had always stood between his wife and him, dividing them.

How would it be now?

Again he looked up at the great house of God, and he felt almost afraid.  But he was not the man he had been when he said good-by to Rosamund; he had gained in force of character, and he knew it.  Surely out there in South Africa, he had done what his mother had wanted him to do, he had laid hold of his best possibilities.  At any rate, he had sincerely tried to do that.  Why, then, should he be afraid—­and of God?

He walked on quickly, and came to Little Cloisters by way of the Dark Entry.

It was very dark that day, for the autumn evening was already making its moist presence felt, and there was a breathing of cold from the old gray stones which looked like the fangs of Time.

Dion shook his broad shoulders in an irresistible shiver as he came out into the passage-way between Rosamund’s garden wall and the ruined cloisters, immediately beyond which rose the east end of the Cathedral.  South Africa had evidently made him sensitive to the dampness and cold of England.

“Little Cloisters.”  The white words showed on a tall green door let into the wall on his left; and, as the verger had said, it was a rare old wall.  So here it actually was!  He was at home.  His heart thumped as he pulled at the bell, and unconsciously he gripped the Toby jug hard with his other hand.

CHAPTER VI

“Dion!  Is it you at last?”

A warm voice called from above, and the blood rushed to his temples.

“Yes.”

It seemed to him that he took the old staircase in his stride, and he had a feeling almost such as a man has when he is going into action.