read shadow of school; and her Eastern
soul could not accept it without a struggle. Only yesterday, Nevil had
spoken of it again--no doubt because Jane made trouble--saying too long
delay would be unfair for Roy. So it must be not later than September
next year. Just only fifteen months! Nevil had told her, laughing, it
would not banish him to another planet. But it would plunge him into a
world apart--utterly foreign to her. Of its dangers, its ideals, its
mysterious influences, she knew herself abysmally ignorant. She must
read. She must try and understand. She must believe Nevil knew
best--she, who had not enough knowledge and too much love. But she was
upheld by no sustaining faith in this English fashion of school, with
its decree of too early separation from the supreme influences of mother
and father--and home....

* * * * *

Later on, that evening, when she knelt by Roy's bed for good-night talk
and prayer, his arms round her neck, his cool cheek against hers, the
rebellion she could not altogether stifle surged up in her afresh. But
she said not a word.

It was Roy who spoke, as if he had read her heart.

"Mummy, Aunt Jane's been talking to Daddy again about school. Oh, I do
_hate_ her!" (This in fervent parenthesis.)

She only tightened her hold and felt a small quiver run through him.

"Will it be fearfully soon? Has Daddy told you?"

"Yes, my darling. But not too fearfully soon, because he knows I don't
wish that."

"When?"

"Not till next year, in the autumn. September."

"Oh, you good--_goodest_ Mummy!"

He clutched her in an ecstasy of relief. For him a year's respite was a
lifetime. For her it would pass like a watch in the night.

CHAPTER VI.

"Thou knowest how, alike, to give and take gentleness in due season
... the noble temper of thy sires shineth forth in thee."--PINDAR.

It was a clear mild Sunday afternoon of November;--pale sunlight, pale
sky, long films of laminated cloud. From the base of orange-tawny
cliffs, the sands swept out with the tide, shining like rippled silk,
where the sea had uncovered them; and sunlight was spilled in pools and
tiny furrows: the sea itself grey-green and very still, with streaks and
blotches of purple shadow flung by no visible cloud. The beauty and the
mystery of them fascinated Roy, who was irresistibly attracted by the
thing he could not understand.

He was sitting alone, near the edge of a woo