The suggestion delighted Monica. She would have her son with her for a whole year. She would be able to watch over him just when he needed her motherly care; she looked forward eagerly to Augustine's return. The old, intimate life they had led together before he went to Madaura would begin again. Again her boy would hang on her arm and tell her all his hopes and dreams for the future--hopes and dreams into which she always entered, of which she was always part. She would look once more into the boy's clear eyes while he confessed to her his faults and failings, and see the light flame up in them as she told him of noble and heroic deeds, and urged him to be true to his ideals. And so in happy dreams the days went past until Augustine's return; but there was bitter grief in store for Monica. This was not the same Augustine that they had left at Madaura two years ago. The days of the old familiar friendship seemed to have gone past recall. His eyes no longer turned to her with the old candour; he shunned her questioning look. He shunned her company even, and seemed more at ease with his father, who was proud beyond words of his tall, handsome son. He was all right, said Patricius; he was growing up, that was all. Boys could not always be tied to their mother's apron-strings. The moment that Monica had so dreaded for Augustine had come then; the pagan influences had been at work. Oh, why had she let him go to Madaura? And yet it had to be so; his father had insisted. She made several efforts to break through the wall of reserve that Augustine had built up between himself and her, but it was of no use. He had other plans now into which she did not enter, other thoughts far away--how far away!--from hers. A dark cloud was between them. One day she persuaded her son to go out with her. The spring had just come--that wonderful African spring when the whole world seems suddenly to burst into flower. Asphodels stood knee-deep on either side of the path in which they walked; the fragrance of the springtime was in their nostrils; the golden sunlight bathed the rainbow earth. It was a walk that they had loved to take of old, to delight together in all the beauty of that world which God had made. Monica spoke gently to her son of the new life that lay before him, of the dangers that beset his path. He must hold fast to the Law of Christ, she told him; he must be pure and strong and true. There was no answering gleam as of old. The boy listened with a bad grace--shame and honour were tugging at his heart-strings, but in vain. The better self was defeated, for the lower self was growing stronger every day. "Woman's talk," he said to himself. "I am no longer a child."