“Rose!”

He held her in his arms and kissed her.

“It’s—­seemed a long time!”

He felt moisture springing to his eyes.  The love he felt for her almost overwhelmed his self-control.  Till this moment he had never known how great it was.  All his deprivation was in that embrace.

“Years it’s seemed!” he said, letting her go with a little laugh, summoned up—­he did not know how—­to save him from too much emotion.

She gazed at him.

“Oh, Dion, how you have altered!”

“Have I?”

“Tremendously.”

How well he knew the kindly glance of her honest brown eyes; a thousand times he had called it up before him in South Africa.  But this was not the glance so characteristic of her.  In the firelit room her eyes looked puzzled, almost wide, with a sort of startled astonishment.

“You had a lot of the boy in you still when you went away.  At least, I used to think so.”

“Haven’t I any left?”

“I can’t see any.  No, I think you’ve come back all man.  And how tremendously burnt you are.”

“Almost black, I suppose.  But I’m so accustomed to it.”

“It’s right,” she said.  “Your face tells the story of what you’ve done.  Robin”—­she paused, then slowly she said—­“Robin’s got almost a new father.”

“Where is he?  He’s sure to have altered more than I have.”

“Oh no.  He’ll be in about five.  I’ve sent him out to tea with some one you know.”

“With whom?”

“Mr. Thrush.”

“Mr. Thrush at Welsley?”

“Yes.  I’ll explain all that presently.  I thought I’d have you all to myself for half an hour, and then Robin should have his turn.  Here comes Annie.”

When the two arm-chairs were occupied, Dion said: 

“And you, Rosamund?”

“What about me?”

“Haven’t you altered?”

“If I have, probably you would know it and I shouldn’t.”

“Yes, I dare say that’s true.  You aren’t conscious of it, then?”

But she was giving him his tea, and that took her mind away from his question, no doubt.  He felt a change in her, but it was not almost fiercely marked like the change in him, on whom a Continent had written with its sun and its wind, and with its battlefields.  The body of a man was graven by such a superscription.  And no doubt even a child could read something of it.  But the writing on Rosamund was much fainter, was far less easy to decipher; it was perhaps traced on the soul rather than on the body.  The new legend of Dion was perhaps an assertion.  But this story of Rosamund, what was it?  She saw the man in Dion, lean, burnt, strong, ardent, desirous, full of suppressed emotion that was warmly and intensely human; he saw in her, as well as the mother, something that was perhaps almost pale, almost elusive, like the still figure and downbent face of a recluse seen in passing an open window.