simplified. It was
better so. In the last days he had often felt confused, beset, had often
felt that he was struggling in a sea of complications which threatened
to overwhelm him. There had been too much to do and there had been too
much to endure; he had been obliged to be practical when he was feeling
intensely emotional. The effort to dominate and to conceal his emotion
had sometimes almost exhausted him in the midst of all he had had to
do. He had come to the knowledge of the fact that it is the work of the
spirit which leaves the whole man tired. He was weary, not from hard
energies connected with his new profession, not from getting up at
dawn, marching through dense crowds of cheering countrymen, traveling,
settling in on shipboard, but from farewells. He looked back now upon a
sort of panorama of farewells, of partings from his mother, his uncle,
Bruce Evelin, Guy, Beatrice, Robin, Rosamund.

Quite possibly all these human companions had vanished out of his life
for ever. It was a tremendous thought, upon which he was resolved not to
dwell lest his courage and his energies might be weakened.

Through good-bys a man may come to knowledge, and Dion had, in these
last few days, gone down to the bedrock of knowledge concerning some of
those few who were intimately in his life--knowledge of them and also
of himself. Nobody had traveled to Southampton to see him off. He had a
very English horror of scenes, and had said all his good-bys in private.
With Bruce Evelin he had had a long talk; they had spoken frankly
together about the future of Rosamund and Robin in the event of his not
coming back. Dion had expressed his views on the bringing up of the boy,
and, in doing so had let Bruce Evelin into secrets of Greece. The father
did not expect, perhaps did not even desire, that the little son should
develop into a paragon, but he did desire for Rosamund's child the
strong soul in the strong body, and the soft heart that was not a
softy's heart.

In that conversation Bruce Evelin had learnt a great deal about Dion.
They had spoken of Rosamund, perhaps more intimately than they had ever
spoken before, and Dion had said, "I'm bothering so much about Robin
partly because her life is bound up with Robin's."

"Several lives are bound up with that little chap's," Bruce Evelin had
said.

And a sudden sense of loneliness had come upon Dion. But he had only
made some apparently casual remark to the effect that he knew Bruce