could she be evil when Robin looked to her
as the embodiment of goodness. What would she not do, what would she not
give up, to increase Robin's love for her, to give him more reason for
regarding her with innocent confidence and simple reverence?

Yes, Robin was surely her way to God.

And now, withdrawn into the very depths of meditation, and hearing
no longer the distant voices of the rooks as they wheeled about the
elm-tops near Canon Wilton's house, she went onwards down the way chosen
for her by God, the "Robin-way."

Now Robin was a young child, and naturally looked up to her as a kind of
Providence. Presently he would be a lad; inevitably he would reach the
age when the growing mind becomes critical. Young animals gnaw hard
things to test the strength of their teeth; so do young growing minds
gnaw the bones that come in their way. Even the mother comes in for much
secret criticism from the son who loves her. Rosamund's time for being
criticized by Robin would come in the course of the years. She must try
to get ready against that time; she must try to be worthy of Robin's
love when he was able to be critical. And so onwards down the way across
the gray expanse, guided, like the birds!

Rosamund saw herself now as the mother of a tall son, hardened a
little by public-school life, a cricketer, a rower, a swimmer; perhaps
intellectual too, the winner of a scholarship. There were so many hearts
and minds that the mother of a son must learn to keep, to companion, to
influence, to go forward with: the heart and the mind of the child, the
schoolboy, the undergraduate, the young man out in the world taking up
his life-task--a soldier perhaps, or a man of learning, a pioneer, a
carver of new ways for the crowd following behind.

It was a tremendous thing to be a mother; it was a difficult way to God.
But it was the most beautiful way of all the ways, and Rosamund was
very thankful that she had been guided to take it. Robin, she knew, had
taught her already very much, but how little compared with all that he
was destined to teach her in the future! Even when her hair was white
no doubt she would still be learning from him, would still be trying to
lift herself a little higher lest he should ever have to look downward
to see her.

For a long time she meditated on these things, for a very long while.
The sun never came back to the garden as she dreamed of the sun which
the birds were seeking, of the sun which she and