ming home."

A deeply serious expression came to Robin's face.

"Have I growed much?"

"Yes, a great deal."

"Will daddy see it?"

"Yes, I'm sure he will directly he comes."

Robin seemed relieved.

"Is daddy coming here?"

"Yes."

"Is he goin' to live here with us?"

"We shall see about all that when he comes."

Annie, evidently still thinking about her cap, reappeared on the garden
path.

"The Dean to see you, ma'am."

Rosamund got up, gave Robin a long kiss on the freckles and said:

"Robin, I believe the Dean has come about Mr. Thrush."

"Does he know Mr. Thrush?"

"Not yet. I'll tell you something presently."

And she went slowly into the house. Was a scheme of hers coming to
fruition just when----? She tried to close her mind to an approaching
thought.

CHAPTER V

On the 7th of October the C.I.V. sailed from South Africa for England,
on the 19th of October they made St. Vincent; on the 23rd Dion again
looked over the sea at the dreaming hills of Madeira. The sight of these
hills made him realize the change brought about in him by the work he
had done in South Africa. As he gazed at them he suddenly and sharply
remembered the man who had gazed at them nine months before, a man
who was gathering together determination, who was silently making
preparations for progress, or for what he thought of as progress. Those
hills then had seemed to be calling to him out of the mists of heat,
and to himself he had seemed to be defying them, to be thrusting their
voices from him. For were they not the hills of a land where the lotus
bloomed, where a weariness bred of stagnant delights wrapped men in a
garment of Nessus, steeped in a subtle poison which drew from them all
their energies, which brought them not pain but an inertia more deadly
to the soul than pain? Now they had no power over him. He did not need
to defy them, because he had gained in strength. Ere they vanished from
his eyes over the sea he remembered another Island rising out of waters
that gleamed with gold. How far off now seemed to him that evening
when he had looked on it as he traveled to Greece! How much he had left
behind on the way of his life!

The experience of separation and of war had not aged him, but it had
made him feel older. Nothing of the boy was left in him. He felt himself
of manhood all compact. He had seen men die, had seen how they were able
to die, how they met severe physical suffering; he had silently trie