m then, intimate and a mystery,
confidential, sleepy with happiness, a tiny holder of the Divine, a
willing revelation and a soft secret. So much in so little!

"You've been playing with Aunt Beattie."

Robin acknowledged it.

"Auntie's putty good at bricks."

"Did you meet Beattie, Dion?" asked Rosamund.

"On the doorstep."

He thought of Beattie's question. There was no question in Rosamund's
face. But perhaps his own face had changed.

A tap came to the door.

"Master Robin?" said nurse, in a voice that held both inquiry and an
admonishing sound.

When Robin had gone off to bed, walking vaguely and full of the
forerunners of dreams, Dion knew that his hour had come. He felt a sort
of great stillness within him, stillness of presage, perhaps, or of
mere concentration, of the will to be, to do, to endure, whatever
came. Rosamund shut down the lid of the piano and came away from the
music-stool. Dion looked at her, and thought of the maidens of the porch
and of the columns of the Parthenon.

"Rosamund," he said,--that stillness within him forbade any preparation,
any "leading up,"--"I've joined the City Imperial Volunteers."

"The City Imperial Volunteers?" she said.

He knew by the sound of her voice that she had not grasped the meaning
of what he had done. She looked surprised, and a question was in her
brown eyes.

"Why? What are they? I don't understand. And the Artists' Rifles?"

"I've got my transfer from them. I've joined for the war."

"The war? Do you mean----?"

She came up to him, looking suddenly intent.

"Do you mean you have volunteered for active service in South Africa?"

"Yes."

"Without consulting me?"

Her whole face reddened, almost as it had reddened when she spoke to him
about the death of her mother.

"Yes. I haven't signed on yet, but the doctor has passed me. I'm to be
sworn in at the Guildhall on the fourth, I believe. We shall sail very
soon, almost directly, I suppose. They want men out there."

He did not know how bruskly he spoke; he was feeling too much to know.

"I didn't think you could do such a thing without speaking to me first.
My husband, and you----!"

She stopped abruptly, as if afraid of what she might say if she went on
speaking. Two deep lines appeared in her forehead. For the first time in
his life Dion saw an expression of acute hostility in her eyes. She had
been angry, or almost angry with him for a moment in Elis, when he broke
off the branc