he loved and understood her sister
too well to rage against her for anything that she did or left undone.
But this very love of her sister, so clearly shown, had made her
condemnation of Rosamund's action the more impressive. And her pity
for Dion was supreme. Through Beatrice Father Robertson had gained an
insight into Dion's love, and into another love, too; but of that he
scarcely allowed himself even to think. There are purities so intense
that, like fire, they burn those who would handle them, however
tenderly. About Beatrice Father Robertson felt that he knew something
he dared not know. Indeed, he was hardly sincere about that matter with
himself. Perhaps this was his only insincerity.

With his friend, Canon Wilton, too, he had spoken of Rosamund, and had
found himself in the presence of a sort of noble anger. Now, in his
little room, as he knelt in meditation, he remembered a saying of the
Canon's, spoken in the paneled library at Welsley: "Leith has a great
heart. When will his wife understand its greatness?"

Father Robertson pressed his thin hands upon his closed eyes. He longed
for guidance and he felt almost distressed. Rosamund had submitted
herself to him, had given herself into his hands, but tacitly she had
kept something back. She had never permitted him to direct her in regard
to her relation with her husband. It was in regard to her relation with
God that she had submitted herself to him.

How grotesque that was!

Father Robertson's face burned.

Before Rosamund had come to him she had closed the book of her married
life with a frantic hand. And Father Robertson had left the book closed.
He saw his delicacy now as cowardice. In his religious relation with
Rosamund he had been too much of a gentleman! When Mrs. Leith, Beatrice,
Canon Wilton had appealed to him, he had said that he would do what he
could some day, but that he felt time must be given to Rosamund, a long
time, to recover from the tremendous shock she had undergone. He had
waited. Something imperative had kept him back from ever going fully
with Rosamund into the question of her separation from her husband. He
had certainly spoken of it, but he had never discussed it, had never got
to the bottom of it, although he had felt that some day he must be quite
frank with her about it.

Some day! No doubt he had been waiting for a propitious moment, that
moment which never comes. Or had his instinct told him that anything he
could say upo