Chapter 3

Robin sat at the desk in her private room and looked at a key she held
in her hand. She had just come upon it among some papers. She had put it
into a narrow lacquered box when she arranged her belongings, after she
left the house in which her mother continued to live. It was the key
which gave entrance to the Gardens. Each householder possessed one. She
alone knew why she rather timidly asked her mother's permission to keep
this one.

"One of the first things I seem to remember is watching the gardeners
planting flowers," Robin had said. "They had rows of tiny pots with
geraniums and lobelia in them. I have been happy there. I should like to
be able to go in sometimes and sit under the trees. If you do not
mind--"

Feather did not mind. She herself was not in the least likely to be
seized with a desire to sit under trees in an atmosphere heavy with
nursemaids and children.

So Robin had been allowed to keep the key and until to-day she had not
opened the lacquer box. Was it quite by accident that she had found it?
She was not quite sure it was and she was asking herself questions, as
she sat looking at it as it lay in her palm.

The face of the whole world had changed since the night when she had sat
among banked flowers and palms and ferns, and heard the splashing of the
fountain and the sound of the music and dancing, and Donal Muir's voice,
all at the same time. That which had happened had made everybody and
everything different; and, because she lived in this particular house
and saw much of special people, she realised that the growing shudder
in the life about her was only the first convulsive tremor of an
earthquake. The Duchess began to have much more for her to do. She
called on her to read special articles in the papers, and to make notes
and find references. Many visitors came to the house to discuss, to
plan, to prepare for work. A number of good-looking, dancing boys had
begun to come in and out in uniform, and with eager faces and a
businesslike military air which oddly transformed them. The recalcitrant
George was more transformed than any of the rest. His eyes looked almost
fierce in their anxious intensity, his voice had taken on a somewhat
hard defiant ring. It could not be possible that he had ever done that
silly thing by the fountain and that she had splashed him from head to
foot. It was plain that there were young soldiers who were straining at
leashes, who were restless at being held back by the bindings of red
tape, and who every hour were hearing things--true or untrue--which
filled them with blind fury. As days passed Robin heard some of these
things--stories from Belgium--which caused her to stare straight before
her, blanched with horror.