of cross currents of sympathy between
the Father and herself.

"I love this hour--I love all this!" she said to herself.

If only little Robin were submerged in the stall beside her!

The feet of the slow procession were heard, and the silver wand of the
chief verger shone out of the delicate gloom.

When the anthem was given out Rosamund looked across at Canon Wilton,
and her eyes said to him, "Thank you." Then she stood up, folded her
hands on the great cushion in front of her, and looked at the gray
vistas and at the dim sparkle of the ancient glass in the narrow
windows.

"The wilderness and the solitary places . . ."

She had spoken of this to Dion as they looked at Zante together, before
little Robin had come, and she had said that if she had committed a
great sin she would like to take her sin into the Wilderness, because
purification might be found there. And she had meant what she said,
had spoken out of her heart sincerely. But now, as she listened to this
anthem, she saw a walled-in garden, with green turf like moss, old elm
trees and straight narrow paths. Perhaps she had been mistaken when
she had spoken of the sin and the Wilderness, perhaps she would find
purification with fewer tears and less agony in the cloister, within the
sound of the bells which called men to the service of God, and of the
human voices which sang His praises. Saints had fled into the Wilderness
to seek God there, but was He not in the Garden between the sheltering
walls, ready there, as in the farthest desert, to receive the submission
of the soul, to listen to the cry, "I have sinned"?

As in Elis the spell of the green wild had been upon Rosamund, so
now the spell of these old Precincts was upon her, and spoke to her
innermost being, and as in Elis Dion had been woven into her dream of
the Wilderness, so now in Welsley Robin was woven into it. But Dion had
seemed a forerunner, and little Robin seemed That for which she had long
waited, the fulfilment of the root desire of her whole being as applied
to human life.

When the service was over and the procession had gone out Rosamund sat
very still listening to the organ. She believed that Canon Wilton had
given the organist a hint that he would have an attentive hearer, for he
was playing one of Bach's greatest preludes and fugues. Father Robertson
stayed on in his place. All the rest of the small congregation drifted
away through the archway in the rood-screen and down