nd silence of the day seemed to deepen
about her. Welsley was fading out of her life. She felt that. She was
going to begin again. But as she had carried Elis with her when she
left it, and the dear tombs and temples of Greece, when she had bidden
good-by to the bare and beautiful land whose winds and whose waters are
not as the winds and the waters of any other region, so she would carry
away with her Welsley, this garden with its seclusion, its old religious
atmosphere, the music of the chimes, even the thrush's song from the
elder bush. "Farewell!" She must say that. But she had her precious
possession. Another page of the book of life would be turned. That was
all.

That was all? She sighed. A painful sense of the impermanence of the
things of this world came suddenly upon her. Like running water life
was slipping by; its joys, the shining bubbles poised upon the surface,
drifted into the distance and--how quickly!--were out of reach.

Perhaps the great attraction, the lure of the religious life, was the
sense felt by those who led it of having a close grip upon that which
was permanent. The joys of the world--even the natural, healthy, allowed
joys--were shut out, but there was the great compensation, companionship
with that to which no "farewell" would ever have to be said, with that
to which death only brought the human being nearer.

Rosamund stopped in her walk, and looked up at the great Cathedral which
towered above the wall of the garden. She had been pacing to and fro
for a long time. She did not feel tired, but she was beset by an
unaccustomed sensation of weariness, mental and spiritual rather than
physical.

After a minute she went into the house, found a rug and a book, came
back into the garden, and sat down on a bench in a corner hidden from
observation. This bench was close to the wall which divided the garden
from the "Dark Entry." It was separated from the lawn and the view of
the house by a belt of shrubs. Rosamund was fond of this nook and had
very often sat in it, sometimes alone, sometimes with Robin. She had
told the maids never to look for her there; if any visitor came and
she was not seen in that part of the garden which was commanded by the
windows of the house, they were to conclude that she was "out." Here,
then, she was quite safe, and could turn the last page of the chapter of
Welsley in her book of life.

She wrapped herself up in the big and heavy rug. The sun was gone, the
mis