old of his providence in the night.

What a mystery was the relation of mother and little child! He lay for
a long while musing about it. Why hadn't he followed Rosamund over the
threshold of the nursery just now? The mystery had held him back.

Was it greater than the mystery of the relation of man to woman in a
love such as his for Rosamund? He considered it, but he was certain that
he could not fathom it. No man, he felt sure, knew or ever could know
how a mother like Rosamund, that is an intensely maternal mother,
regarded her child when he was little and dependent on her; how she
loved him, what he meant to her. And no doubt the gift of the mother to
the child was subtly reciprocated by the child. But just how?

Dion could not remember at all what he had felt, or how he had regarded
his mother when he was nine months old. Presently he recalled Hermes and
the child in that remote and hushed room hidden away in the green wilds
of Elis; he even saw them before him--saw the beautiful face of the
Hermes, saw the child's stretched-out arm.

Elis! He had been wonderfully happy there, far away in the smiling
wilderness. Would he ever be there again? And, if fate did indeed lead
his steps thither, would he again be wonderfully happy? Of one thing he
was certain; that he would never see Elis, would never see Hermes and
the child again, unless Rosamund was with him. She had made the green
wilderness to blossom as the rose. She only could make his life to
blossom. He depended upon her terribly--terribly. Always that love of
his was growing. People, especially women, often said that the love of
a man was quickly satisfied, more quickly than a woman's, that the
masculine satisfaction was soon followed by satiety. Love such as that
was only an appetite, a species of lust. Such a woman as Rosamund could
not awaken mere lust. For her a man might have desire, but only the
desire that every great love of a man for a woman encloses. And how
utterly different that was from physical lust.

He thought of the maidens upholding the porch of the Erechtheion. His
Rosamund descended from them, was as pure, as serene in her goodness, as
beautiful as they were.

In thinking of the beloved maidens he did not think of them as marble.

Before he went to sleep Dion had realized that, since Rosamund was
awake, the reason for his coming to the spare room did not exist.
Nevertheless he did not go to their bedroom that night. Robin's little
dry