“Robin would be swallowed up in a stall,” she whispered to Dion.

And they both looked down at the little chap tenderly, and met his blue eyes turned confidingly, yet almost anxiously too, up to them.  He was wondering about all this whispering with the verger, and hoping that nothing had happened to Mr. Thrush.

They found perfect seats in a pew just beyond the deanery stalls.  Far up in the distance above them one bell, the five minutes’ bell, was chiming.  Its voice recalled to Rosamund the “ping-ping” of the bell of St. Mary’s Church which had welcomed her in the fog.  How much had happened since then!  Robin was nestling against her.  He sat between her and his father, and was holding his father’s hand.  By dividing Dion from her he united her with Dion.  She thought of the mystery of the Trinity, and then of their mystery, the mystery of father, mother and child.  To-day she felt very happy, and happy in an unusual way.  In her happiness she know that, in a sort of under way, she had almost dreaded Dion’s return.  She had been so peacefully content, so truly at rest and deeply serene in the life at Welsley with Robin.  In her own heart she could not deny that she had loved having her Robin all to herself; and she had loved, too, the long hours of solitude during which, in day-dreams, she had lived the religious life.  A great peace had enveloped those months at Welsley.  In them she had mysteriously grown into a closer relation with her little son.  She had often felt in those months that this mysterious nearness could never have become quite what it had become to her unless she had been left alone with Robin.  It was their solitude which had enabled her to concentrate wholly on Robin, and it was surely this exclusive concentration on Robin which had drawn him so very close to her.  All the springs of his love had flowed towards her.

She had been just a wee bit frightened about Dion’s return.

And that was why at this moment, when the five minutes’ bell was ringing, she felt so happy.  For Dion’s return had not made any difference; or, if it had made a difference, she did not actively regret it.  The child’s new adoration of his father had made her care more for Dion, and even more for Robin; for she felt that Robin was unconsciously loving in his father a strength and a nobility which were new in Dion, which had been born far away across the sea.  War destroys, and all the time war is destroying it is creating.  Robin was holding a little bit of what the South African War had created as he held his father’s hand.  For are not the profound truths of the soul conveyed through all its temple?

“Happiness is a mystery,” thought Rosamund.

And then she silently thanked God that this mystery was within herself, and that she felt it in Robin and in Dion.

She looked down at her little son, and as she met his soft and yet ardent eyes,—­full of innocent anxiety, and almost of awe, about Mr. Thrush,—­she blessed the day when she had decided to marry Dion, when she had renounced certain dreams, when she had taken the advice of the man who was now her friend and had resolved to tread that path of life in which she could have a companion.