old Robin, the Robin blessedly unchanged,
she could not be really unhappy. Yet it was sad to give up the dear
garden and all the dreams which belonged to it. Far down in her--she
knew it--there was certainly a recluse. She could see the black figure,
the sheltered face, the eyes looking down, the praying hands. It would
have been very natural to her long ago to seek God in the way of the
recluse. But not now!

Hermes and the child came before her. In the stillness of Welsley it was
as if she heard the green stillness of Elis. She was quite alone in that
inner room where stood the messenger with the wings on his sandals. Dion
had stayed outside. He had been unselfish that day as to-day she had
been unselfish. For she had wanted to go with the little gaiters. She
could see the smiling look of eternity upon the face of the messenger.
He had no fear for the child. He had mounted on winged feet to the
region where no fear is. How his benign and eternal calm had sunk into
Rosamund's soul that day in Elis. Far off she had seen through the frame
of the Museum doorway a bit of the valley in which the Hermes had dwelt,
and stretching across it a branch of wild olive. She had looked at it
and had thought of the victor's Crown, a crown which had even been won
by a boy at the games.

Already then a fore-knowledge of Robin had been in her.

She had gazed at the branch and loved it. Certainly she had been
dreaming, as she had afterwards told Dion, and in her dream had been
Hermes and the child, and surely another child for whose future the
messenger would not fear. The branch of wild olive had, perhaps, entered
into the dream. Into a crown she had wound it to set upon the little
fair head. And that was why she had suffered, had really suffered, when
a cruel hand had come into Elis and had torn down the wild olive branch.
Dion's hand!

That action had been like a murder. She remembered even now her feeling
of anger and distress. She had been startled. She had been ruthlessly
torn away from the exquisite calm in which, with the Hermes, she had
been celestially dreaming. Dion had torn her away, Dion who loved her so
much.

Why had he done it? Even now she did not know.

He had taken her out of that dream, and now he was going to take her
away from Welsley.

The misty brightness was already fading from the garden; the song of the
thrush was no longer audible: he had flown away from the elder bush
and from Rosamund. The coldness a