business in London and had left England; but that was all.  She had refused to have any news of him.  She had made it plainly understood long ago, when the wound was fresh in her soul, that Dion’s name was never to be mentioned in letters to her.  She had tried by every means to blot his memory out of her mind as she had blotted his presence out of her life.  In this effort she had totally failed.  Dion had never left her since he had killed Robin.  In the flesh he had pursued her in the walled garden at Welsley on that dark night of November when for her the whole world had changed.  In another intangible, mysterious guise he had attended her ever since.  He had been about her path and about her bed.  Even when she knelt at the altar in the Supreme Service he had been there.  She had felt his presence as she touched the water, as she lifted the cup.  Through all these months she had learnt to know that there are those whom, once we have taken them in, we cannot cast out of our lives.

Since the death of Robin, in absence Dion had assumed a place in her life which he had never occupied in the days of their happiness.  Sometimes she had bitterly resented this; sometimes she had tried to ignore it; sometimes, like a cross, she had taken it up and tried to bear it with patience or with bravery.  She had even prayed against it.

Never were prayers more vain than those which she put up against this strange and terrible possession of herself by the man she had tried to cast out of her life.  Sometimes even it seemed to her that when she prayed thus Dion’s power to affect her increased.  It was as if mysteriously he drew nearer to her, as if he enveloped her with an influence from which she could not extricate herself.  There were hours in the night when she felt afraid of him.  She knew that wherever he was, however far off, his mind was concentrated upon her.  She grew to realize, as she had never realized before, what mental power is.  She had separated her body from Dion’s, but his mind would not leave her alone.  Often she was conscious of hostility.  When she strove to give herself absolutely and entirely to the life of religion and of charity she was aware of a force holding her back.  This force—­so it seemed to her—­would not permit her to enter into the calm and the peace of the dedicated life.  She was like some one looking in at a doorway, desirous of entering a room.  She saw the room clearly; she saw others enjoying its warmth and its shelter and its serene and guarded tranquillity; but she was unable to cross the threshold.

That warm and sheltered room was not for her.  And it was Dion’s force which held her back from entering it and from dwelling in it.

She could not give herself wholly to God because of Dion.

Of her struggle, of her frustration, of her mental torment in this connexion she had never spoken to Father Robertson.  Even in confession she had been silent.  He knew of her mother-agony; he did not know of the stranger, more subtle agony beneath it.  He did not know that whereas the one agony with the lapse of time was not passing away—­it would never do that—­but was becoming more tender, more full of tears and of sweet recollections, the other agony grew harsher, more menacing.