“Shall we reach that goal and take a child with us?”

Long ago that had been Dion’s thought in Elis.  And long ago Rosamund had broken the silence within that room by the words: 

“I’m trying to learn something here, how to bring him up if he ever comes.”

And now God had given them a child, and God had taken him from them.  Robin had gone from all that was not intended, but that, for some inscrutable reason, had come to be.  Robin was in the released world.

As the twilight began to fall another twilight came back flooding with its green dimness the memories of them both.  And at last Rosamund spoke.

“Dion!”

“Yes.”

“Come a little nearer to me.”

He came close to her and stood beside her.

“Do you remember something you said to me here?  It was in the twilight——­”

She paused.  Tears had come into her eyes and her voice had trembled.

“It was in the twilight.  You said that it seemed to you as if Hermes were taking the child away, partly because of us.”

Her voice broke.

“I—­I disliked your saying that.  I told you I couldn’t feel that.”

“I remember.”

“And then you explained exactly what you meant.  And we spoke of the human fear that comes to those who look at a child they love and think, ‘what is life going to do to the child?’ This evening I want to tell you that in a strange way I am able to be glad that Robin has gone, glad with some part of me that is more mother than anything else in me, I think.  Robin is—­is so safe now.”

The tears came thickly and fell upon her face.  She put out a hand to Dion.  He clasped it closely.

“God took him away, and perhaps because of us.  I think it may have been to teach us, you and me.  Perhaps we needed a great sorrow.  Perhaps nothing else could have taught us something we had to learn.”

“It may be so,” he almost whispered.

She got up and leaned against his shoulder.

“Whatever happens to me in the future,” she said, “I don’t think I shall ever distrust God again.”

He put his arm round her and, for the first time since their reunion, he kissed her, and she returned his kiss.

Over Elis the twilight was falling, a green twilight, sylvan and very ethereal, tremulous in its delicate beauty.  It stole through the green doors, and down through the murmuring pine trees.  The sheep-bells were ringing softly; the flocks were going homeward from pasture; and the chime of their little bells mingled with the wide whispering of the eternities among the summits of the pine trees.  Music of earth mingled with the music from a distance that knew what the twilight knew.

Presently the two marble figures in the chamber of the Hermes began to fade away gradually, as if deliberately withdrawing themselves from the gaze of men.  At last only their outlines were visible to Rosamund and to Dion.  But even these told of the Golden Age, of the age of long peace.