For a moment she thought of going to see some of her friends, of telling Mrs. Dickinson and other adherents of hers that her days in Welsley were numbered.  But a reluctance seized her.  She felt a desire to be alone.  What if instead of saying good-by to Welsley, she said good-by to her dreams in Welsley?  She summoned Annie and told her not to let any one in.

“I’m going to spend a quiet day, Annie,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Annie, with an air of intelligent comprehension.

“Though what else any one ever does in old Welsley I’m sure I couldn’t say,” she afterwards remarked to the cook.

“You’re a cockney at ’eart, Annie,” repeated that functionary.  “The country says nothing to you.  You want the parks, that’s what you want.”

“Well, I was brought up in ’em, as you may say,” said Annie, whose father had been a park-keeper, and whose mother and grandmother were natives of Westbourne Grove.

By a quiet day Rosamund meant a day lived through in absolute solitude, a day of meditation in the cloistered garden.  She would not have any lunch.  Then she would have a better appetite for the nursery tea at which Robin would relate to her all the doings of the greatest day of his life.  Precious, precious Robin!

She went down into the garden.

It was a mistily bright day of November.  The sun shone through a delicate veil.  The air was cold but not sharp.  Neither autumn nor winter ruled.  It seemed like a day which had slipped into an interstice between two seasons, a day that was somehow rare and exceptional, holding a faint stillness that was strange.  There was in it something of the far away.  If a fairy day can be cold, it was like a fairy day.  On such a day one treads lightly and softly and at moments feels almost as if out of the body.

Lightly and softly Rosamund went to and fro between the high and mossy walls of the garden, keeping to the straight paths.  When the bells chimed in the tower of the Cathedral they sounded much farther away than usual; the song of the thrush somewhere in the elder bush near the garden door was curiously remote; the caw-caw of the rooks dropped down as if from an immeasurable distance.  Through the mist the sunshine filtered, lightly pale and pure, a sensitive sunshine which would surely not stay very long in Rosamund’s garden.

A sort of thin stillness had fallen upon the world.

And so another chapter of life was closing, the happy chapter of
Welsley!

Something of sadness accompanied Rosamund along the straight paths, the delicate melancholy which attends the farewells of one who has regret but who has hope.

With the new Dion and with the old Robin, the Robin blessedly unchanged, she could not be really unhappy.  Yet it was sad to give up the dear garden and all the dreams which belonged to it.  Far down in her—­she knew it—­there was certainly a recluse.  She could see the black figure, the sheltered face, the eyes looking down, the praying hands.  It would have been very natural to her long ago to seek God in the way of the recluse.  But not now!