t had become slightly more dense, the air was colder.

Presently Dion and Robin would come back; there would be tea in the warm
old-fashioned nursery, gay talk, the telling of wonderful deeds.

If only Robin did not fall off Jane! But Dion would take care of that.
Dion certainly loved Robin very much. The bond between father and son
had evidently been strengthened by the intervention of the war, which
had broken off their intercourse for a time, and given Robin a father
changed by contact with hard realities.

For a few minutes in imagination Rosamund followed the two figures over
the stubble, the thin strong walking figure, and the little darling
figure on pony back. Would Robin quite forget her in the midst of his
proud and triumphant joy? She wondered. Even if he did, she would not
really mind. She wanted him to be very happy indeed without her--just
for a short time: that he could not be happy without her for long she
knew very well.

Oddly, her sensation of weariness persisted. She recognized it now
as wholly unphysical. She was certainly feeling what people call
"depressed." No doubt this unusual depression--for she had been born
with a singularly cheerful spirit--was caused by the resolution she had
taken to give up Welsley. Perhaps Welsley meant more to her even than
she had supposed. But it was absurd--wasn't it?--to be so dominated by
places. People, certain people, might mean everything in the life of a
woman; many women lived, really lived, only in and through their lovers,
their husbands, their children; but what woman lived in and through the
life of the place? She had only to compare mentally the loss of Welsley
with--say--the loss of Dion, the new Dion, to realize how little Welsley
really meant to her. Certainly she loved it as a place, but probably a
woman can only love a place with a bit of her.

And yet to-day, she certainly felt depressed. Even the thought of the
nursery tea did not drive the depression from her.

She opened the book she had brought from the house. It was a volume
of Browning's poems. She had opened it at hap-hazard, and now her eyes
rested on these words, words loved almost above all others by one of the
greatest souls that ever spent itself for England:

"I go to prove my soul!
I see my way as birds their trackless way
I shall arrive! What time, what circuit first
I ask not; but unless God send His Hail
Or blinding fire-balls, sleet, or stifling sn