igorous and joyous; this Rosamund was strongly serene. In all she was
and did at this time Dion felt strength; but it was shown chiefly in
stillness. She worked sometimes; she read a great deal sitting upstairs
in her own little room. One day Dion found her with a volume of
Tennyson; another day she was reading Shakespeare's "Henry the Fifth";
she had the "Paradiso" in hand, too, and the Greek Testament with the
English text in parallel columns. In the room there was a cottage piano,
and one evening, when Dion had been drilling and came back late, he
heard her singing. He stood still in the hall, after shutting softly the
door of the lobby, and listened to the warm and powerful voice of the
woman he loved. He could hear the words of the song, which was a setting
of "Lead, kindly Light." Rosamund had only just begun singing it when he
came into the hall; the first words he caught were, "The night is dark,
and I am far from home; lead thou me on." He thrust his hands into the
pockets of the black jacket he was wearing and did not move. He had
never before heard Rosamund sing any piece of music through without
seeing her while she was doing it; her voice seemed to him now different
from the voice he knew so well; perhaps because he was uninfluenced by
her appearance. That counted for much in the effect Rosamund created
when she sang to people. The thought went through Dion's mind, "Am I
really the husband of this voice?" It was beautiful, it was fervent,
but it was strange, or seemed strange to him as it came down through the
quiet house on this winter evening. For the first time, listening thus,
he was able imaginatively to realize something of what it must be
like to be a mystic, or rather, perhaps, to have within one a definite
tendency towards mysticism, a definite and ceaseless and governing
aspiration towards harmony with the transcendental order. When this
voice which he heard above him sang "The night is dark, and I am far
from home," he felt a sort of sharp comprehension of the real meaning of
homeless wandering such as he had certainly never experienced before. He
felt, too, that the spirit from which this voice proceeded could never
be at home in the ordinary way of ordinary people, could not be at home
even as he himself could be at home. The spirit behind this voice needed
something of which, till now, he had not consciously felt the need;
something peculiar, out of the way and remote--something very different
f