“I wanted to taste your home, to get into your atmosphere, if I could, before seeing you. Rose, love can make a man almost afraid at times.”
It seemed to her that his dark eyes burned with fires they had captured in South Africa. Sitting in the old room with its homely and ecclesiastical look, he had an oddly remote appearance, she thought, as if he belonged to a very different milieu. Always dark, he now looked almost gipsy-like; yet he had the unmistakable air of a soldier. But if there had ever been anything there was now nothing left of the business man in Dion.
“Won’t you find it very difficult to settle down again to the life in Austin Friars, Dion?” she said.
“Perhaps I should, but for one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“You and Robin at home when the drudgery is done.”
Rosamund saw Welsley receding from her into darkness, with its familiar faces and voices, its gray towers, its cloisters, its bells, the Dresden Amen, the secret garden, the dreams she had had in the garden.
“Number 5 is all ready to go into. It was lucky we only let it for six months,” she said quietly.
“Uncle Biron has given me a fortnight’s holiday, or rather gladly agreed to my taking it. Of course I’m my own master in a way, being a partner, but I want to consider him. He was awfully good about my going away. Mother’s looking well. She was at our Thanksgiving Service; Beattie and Guy too. I’ve had just a glimpse of godfather.”
They talked about family things till Robin came in from his festivity with Mr. Thrush, who was staying at Little Cloisters, but only till the following day.