They were smoking together on the terrace. It was Sunday afternoon, and there was a peculiar stillness in the air and scene. Rowena always had Mysie for an hour after lunch in her boudoir upstairs. She had told her frankly that she was going to try to teach her to love her Bible. Milly and Bertha had asked to come too, so the hour's Bible reading was now quite an institution. Sometimes George joined them, but upon this occasion he had gone for a walk with the General. Hector raised his eyes, and when they met Di's, he smiled.
"Well, what's the verdict?"
She shook her head.
"You're too complex for me!"
"I'll give you a chink of light to help you on. I was three years in the war. As you say, religion is now not the fashion, and it isn't good form to talk about it; but in the trenches we did a good bit of talking, and we didn't care a hang if a chap started a yarn about life and death and hereafter, for we were all interested in it. Of course we were. We were shot out of this world into the next all day long. We all had our theories; but in my section at one time there was a parson who knew his job, and did it; and he was a jolly good fellow all round. He made us believe in him, and then he got us to believe in the things he believed. And my belief has stuck ever since; see?"
There was for a second a wistful gleam in Di's eye. Then she said coolly:
"Oh, yes, I see. And Rowena is doing the same with me as your parson did with you. But I'm as hard as nails, and she has a tough job."
"They say," said Hector, as he leant over the stone balustrade, and puffed away at his pipe, "that we all drift back in time to our starting-point. I was an irreligious little beggar when I was a boy, but every Scotchman is brought up in the way in which he should go. I had the head knowledge, and then I chucked it and ran amok for a few years. I found that didn't pay, and settled down to be steady. But it was at the Front I found my early Faith was the only one worth having. And our parson taught us how to live as well as how to die. I never shall be a shining light as, for instance, my cousin Hugh is; but I've got the comfort of settled and rooted convictions. And they make life a bigger and a more understandable thing!"
Di was mute. If a bolt from the blue had tumbled down at her feet she couldn't have been more amazed. She began to wonder if she was always going to be beset with people who would worry her with their religious convictions. To her great relief Hector did not pursue the subject, and she listened with interest to an account he gave her of a journey of his across the Rocky Mountains, when he was shooting bears. But the following Sunday she accompanied the others to church, and never missed a service from that time forward.
Hector only stayed a fortnight with them. He and Di had a long ride together the afternoon before he went, and when they were returning, he said: