the ancient things more living and powerful in their message.

"Welsley always sends out influences," she had once said to Father
Robertson. "But in certain autumn days it speaks. I hear its voice in
the autumn."

She heard its voice now as she waited for Dion.

The lattice window which gave on to the garden was partly open;
there was a fire in the wide, old-fashioned grate; vases holding
chrysanthemums stood on the high wood mantelpiece and on the
writing-table; the tea-table had been placed by Annie near the hearth.

Rosamund listened to the cloistral silence, and looked at two deep,
old-fashioned arm-chairs which were drawn up by the tea-table.

Just how much had she missed Dion?

That question had suddenly sprung up in her mind as she looked at the
two arm-chairs.

The first time she had been in Little Cloisters she had spoken to Canon
Wilton of Dion, had wondered if he would come back from South Africa
altered; and she had said that if she came to live in it Welsley might
alter her. Canon Wilton had made no comment on her remark. She had
scarcely noticed that at the time, perhaps had not consciously noticed
it; but her subconscious mind had recorded the fact, and she recalled it
now.

Welsley, she thought, had changed her a good deal. She was not a
self-conscious woman as a rule, but to-day was not like other days, and
she was not quite like herself on other days. Perhaps, for once, she
was what women often call "strung up"; certainly she felt peculiarly
alive--alive specially in the nerves of her body.

Those two arm-chairs were talking to her; they were telling her of
the imminent renewal of the life closely companioned, watched over,
protected, beloved. They were telling, and they were asking, too. She
felt absurdly that it was they who were asking how much she had missed
Dion.

It would be good to have him back, but she now suddenly realized, in a
self-conscious way, that she had managed to be very happy without him.
But then she had always looked forward to his eventual return. Suppose
he had not come back?

She got up restlessly, went to the window and looked out into the
garden. Robin was not there, nor was he in the house. Obedient to an
impulse which she had not understood at the time, Rosamund had arranged
a small, and rather odd, festivity for him which had taken him away from
home, and would keep him out till five o'clock: he was having tea in
a cake-shop near the top of Wesley High Street