had not been able to kill what she was to Dion and what Dion was
to her. Through the mingling of their two beings there had been born a
mystery which was, perhaps, eternal like the sound of the murmur in the
pine trees above the Valley of Olympia.

She could not trample it into nothingness.

At first, after the tragedy of which Robin had been the victim, Rosamund
had felt a horror of Dion which was partly animal. She had fled from him
because she had been physically afraid of him. He had been changed for
her from the man who loved her, and whom she loved in her different way,
into the slayer of her child. She knew, of course, quite well that Dion
was not a murderer, but nevertheless she thought of him as one thinks of
a murderer. The blood of her child was upon his hands. She trembled at
the thought of being near him. Nevertheless, because she was not mad,
in time reason asserted itself within her. Dion disappeared out of her
life. He did not put up the big fight for the big thing of which Lady
Ingleton had once spoken to her husband. His type of love was far too
sensitive to struggle and fight on its own behalf. When he had heard the
key of his house door turned against him, when, later, Mr. Darlington
with infinite precautions had very delicately explained to him why it
had been done, Rosamund had attained her freedom. He had waited on for
a time in England, but he had somehow never been able really to hope for
any change in his wife. His effort to make her see the tragedy in its
true light had exhausted itself in the garden at Welsley. Her frantic
evasion of him had brought it to an end. He could not renew it. Even if
he had been ready to renew it those about Rosamund would have dissuaded
him from doing so. Every one who was near her saw plainly that "for the
present"--as they put it--Dion must keep out of her life.

And gradually Rosamund had lost that half-animal fear of him, gradually
she had come to realize something of the tragedy of his situation. A
change had come about in her almost in despite of herself. And yet she
had never been able to forgive him for what he had done. Her reason knew
that she had nothing to forgive; her religious sense, her conception of
God, obliged her to believe that Dion had been God's instrument when
he had killed his child; but something within her refused him pardon.
Perhaps she felt that pardon could only mean one thing--reconciliation.
And now had come Lady Ingleton's revelati