the locked and treasured book that held them was the sheet-anchor to
which she clung, till the new Roy should be forged out of the
backslidings and renewals incidental to that time of stress and
becoming. What matter their young imperfections, when--for her--it was
as if Roy's spirit reached out across the dividing distance and touched
her own. In the days when he seemed most withdrawn, that dear illusion
was her secret bread.

And all the while, subconsciously, she was drawing nearer to the given
moment of religious surrender that would complete the spiritual link
with husband and children. As the babies grew older, she saw, with
increasing clearness, the increasing difficulty of her position.
Frankly, she had tried not to see it. Her free spirit, having reached
the Reality that transcends all forms, shrank from returning to the
dogmas, the limitations of a definite creed. In her eyes, it seemed a
step backward. Belief in a personal God, above and beyond the Universe,
was reckoned by her own faith a primitive conception; a stage on the way
to that ultima Thule where the soul of man perceives its own inherent
divinity, and the knower becomes the Known, as notes become music, as
the river becomes the sea. It was this that troubled her logical mind
and delayed decision.

But the final deciding factor--though he knew it not--was Roy. By reason
of her own share in him, religion would probably mean more to him than
to Nevil. For his sake--for the sake of Christine and Tara and the
babies, fast sprouting into boys--she felt at last irresistibly
constrained to accept, with certain mental reservations, the tenets of
her husband's creed; and so qualify herself to share with them all its
outward and visible forms, as already she shared its inward and
spiritual grace.