It was the month of May. Already there had been several unusually hot days in Constantinople, and Mrs. Clarke was beginning to think about the villa at Buyukderer. She was getting tired of Pera. She had fulfilled her promise to Dion Leith. She had given up going to England for Jimmy’s Christmas holidays and had spent the whole winter in Constantinople. But now she had had enough of it for the present, indeed more than enough of it.

She was feeling weary of the everlasting diplomatic society, of the potins political and social, of the love affairs and intrigues of her acquaintances which she knew of or divined, of the familiar voices and faces. She wanted something new; she wanted to break away. The restlessness that was always in her, concealed beneath her pale aspect of calm, was persecuting her as the spring with its ferment drew near to the torrid summer.

The spring had got into her veins and had made her long for novelty.

One morning when Sonia came into Mrs. Clarke’s bedroom with the coffee she brought a piece of news.

“Miladi Ingleton arrived at the Embassy from England yesterday,” said Sonia, in her thick, soft voice.

The apparent recovery of Lady Ingleton’s mother had been a deception. She had had a relapse almost immediately after Lady Ingleton’s return from Liverpool to London; an operation had been necessary, and Lady Ingleton had been obliged to stay on in England several weeks. During this time Mrs. Clarke had had no news from her. Till Sonia’s announcement she had not known the date fixed for her friend’s return. She received the information with her usual inflexibility, and merely said:

“I’ll go to see her this afternoon.”

Then she took up a newspaper which Sonia had brought in with her and began to sip the coffee.

As soon as she was dressed she sent a note to the British Embassy to ask if her friend would be in at tea-time.

Lady Ingleton drew her brows together when she read it. She was delighted to be again in Constantinople, for she had missed Carey quite terribly, but she wished that Cynthia Clarke was anywhere else. Ever since her visit to Liverpool she had been dreading the inevitable meeting with the friend whose secret she had betrayed. Yet the meeting must take place. She would be obliged some day to look once more into Cynthia Clarke’s earnest and distressed eyes. When that happened would she hate herself very much for what she had done? She had often wondered. She wondered now, as she read the note written in her friend’s large upright hand, as she wrote a brief answer to say she would be in after five o’clock that day.

She was troubled by the fact that her visit to Liverpool had not yielded the result she had hoped for. Rosamund Leith had not sought her husband. But she had taken off the sister’s dress and had given up living in the north.

Lady Ingleton knew this from Father Robertson, with whom she corresponded. She had never seen Rosamund or heard from her since the interview in the Adelphi Hotel. And she was troubled, although she had recently received from Father Robertson a letter ending with these words:

“Pressure would be useless. I have found by experience that one cannot hurry the human soul. It must move at its own pace. You have done your part. Try to leave the rest with confidence in other hands. Through you she knows the truth of her husband’s condition. She has given up the Sisterhood. Surely that means that she has taken the first step on the road that leads to Constantinople.”

But now May was here with its heat, and its sunshine, and its dust, and Lady Ingleton must soon meet the eyes of Cynthia Clarke, and the man she had striven to redeem was unredeemed.

She sighed as she got up from her writing-table. Perhaps perversely she felt that she would mind meeting Cynthia Clarke less if her treachery had been rewarded by the accomplishment of her purpose. A useless treachery seemed to her peculiarly unpardonable. She hated having done a wrong without securing a quid pro quo. Even if Father Robertson was right, and Rosamund Leith’s departure from the Sisterhood were the first step on the road to Constantinople, she might arrive too late.

Although she was once more with Carey, Lady Ingleton felt unusually depressed.

Soon after five the door of her boudoir was opened by a footman, and Mrs. Clarke walked slowly in, looking Lady Ingleton thought, even thinner, even more haggard and grave than usual. She was perfectly dressed in a gown that was a marvel of subtle simplicity, and wore a hat that drew just enough attention to the lovely shape of her small head.

“Certainly she has the most delicious head I ever saw,” was Lady Ingleton’s first (preposterous) thought. “And the strongest will I ever encountered,” was the following thought, as she looked into her friend’s large eyes.

After they had talked London and Paris for a few minutes Lady Ingleton changed the subject, and with a sort of languid zest, which was intended to conceal a purpose she desired to keep secret, began to speak of Pera and of the happenings there while she had been away. Various acquaintances were discussed, and presently Lady Ingleton arrived, strolling, at Dion Leith.

“Mr. Leith is still here, isn’t he?” she asked. “Carey hasn’t seen him lately but thinks he is about.”

“Oh yes, he is still here,” said Mrs. Clarke’s husky voice.

“What does he do? How does he pass his time?”

“I often wonder,” replied Mrs. Clarke, squeezing a lemon into her cup, which was full of clear China tea.

She put the lemon, thoroughly squeezed, down on its plate, looking steadily at her friend, and continued:

“You remember last summer when I asked you to be kind to him, and told you why I was interested in him, poor fellow?”

“Oh yes.”

“I really thought at that time it would be possible to assist him to get back into life, what we understand by life. You helped me like a true friend.”

“Oh, I really did nothing.”

“You enabled me to continue my acquaintance with him here,” said Mrs. Clarke inflexibly.

Lady Ingleton was silent, and Mrs. Clarke continued:

“You know what I did, my efforts to interest him in all sorts of things. I even got Jimmy out because I knew Mr. Leith was fond of him, threw them together, even tried to turn Mr. Leith into a sort of holiday tutor. Anything to take him out of himself. Later on, when Jimmy went back to England, I though I would try hard to wake up Dion Leith’s mind.”

“Did you?” said Lady Ingleton, in her most languid voice.

“I took him about in Stamboul. I showed him all the interesting things that travelers as a rule know nothing about. I tried to make him feel Stamboul. I even spent the winter here chiefly because of him, though, of course, nobody must know that but you.”

“Entendu, ma chere!”

“But I’ve made a complete failure of it all.”

“You meant that Mr. Leith can’t take up life again?”

“He simply doesn’t care for the things of the mind. He has very few mental resources. I imagined that there was very much more in him to work upon than there is. If his heart receives a hard blow, an intellectual man can always turn for consolation to the innumerable things of art, philosophy, literature, that are food for the mind. But Mr. Leith unfortunately isn’t an intellectual man. And another thing——”

She had been speaking very quietly; now she paused.

“Yes?” said Lady Ingleton.

“Jimmy came out for the Easter holidays. It was absurd, because they’re so short, but I had to see him, and I couldn’t very well go to England. Well, Jimmy’s taken a violent dislike to Mr. Leith.”

“I thought Jimmy was very fond of him.”

“He was devoted to him, but now he can’t bear him. In fact, Jimmy won’t have anything to do with Dion Leith. I suppose—boys of that age are often very sharp—I suppose he sees the deterioration in Mr. Leith and it disgusts him.”

“Deterioration!” said Lady Ingleton, leaning forward, and speaking more impulsively than before.

“Yes. It is heart-rending.”

“Really!”

“And it makes things difficult for me.”

“I’m sorry for that.”

There was a moment of silence; then, as Mrs. Clarke did not speak, but sat still wrapped in a haggard immobility, Lady Ingleton said:

“When do you go to Buyukderer?”

“I shall probably go next week. I’ve very tired of Pera.”

“You look tired.”

“I didn’t mean physically. I’m never physically tired.”

“Extraordinary woman!” said Lady Ingleton, with a faint, unhumorous smile. “Come and see some Sevres I picked up at Christie’s. Carey is delighted with it, although, of course, horrified at the price I paid for it.”

She got up and went with Mrs. Clarke into one of the drawing-rooms. Dion Leith was not mentioned again.

That evening the Ingletons dined alone. Sir Carey said he must insist on a short honeymoon even though they were obliged to spend it in an Embassy. They had dinner in Bohemian fashion on a small round table in Lady Ingleton’s boudoir, and were waited upon by Sir Carey’s valet, a middle-aged Italian who had been for many years in his service and who had succeeded, in the way of Italian servants, in becoming one of the family. The Pekinese lay around solaced by the arrival of their mistress and of their doyenne.

When dinner was over and Sir Carey had lit his cigar, he breathed a sigh of contentment.

“At last I’m happy once more after all those months of solitude!”

He looked across at his wife, and added:

“But are you happy at being with me again?”

She smiled.

“Yes,” he said, “I know, of course.”

“Then why do you ask?”

“Well, I’m a trained observer, like every competent diplomatist, and—there’s something. I see in the lute of your happiness a tiny rift. It’s scarcely visible, but—I see it.”

“I’m not quite happy to-night.”

“And you won’t tell me why, on our honeymoon?”

“I want to tell you but I can’t. I have no right to tell you.”

“You only can judge of that.”

“I’ve done something that even you might think abominable, something treacherous. I had a great reason—but still!” She sighed. “I shall never be able to tell you what it is, because to do that would increase my sin. To-night I’m realizing that I’m not at all sorry for what I have done. And that not being sorry—as well as something else—makes me unhappy in a new way. It’s all very complicated.”

“Like Balkan politics! Shall we”—he looked round the room meditatively—“shall we set the dogs at it?”

She smiled.

“Even they couldn’t drive my tristesse quite away. You have more power with me than many dogs. Read me something. Read me ‘Rabbi ben Ezra.’”

Sir Carey went to fetch the exorcizer.

The truth was that Lady Ingleton’s interview with Cynthia Clarke had made her realize two things: that since she had come to know Father Robertson, and had betrayed to him the secret of her friend’s life, any genuine feeling of liking she had had for Cynthia Clarke had died; and that Cynthia Clarke was tired of Dion Leith.

That day Mrs. Clarke’s hypocrisy had, perhaps, for the first time, absolutely disgusted, and even almost horrified, Lady Ingleton. For years Lady Ingleton had known of it, but for years she had almost admired it. The cleverness, the subtlety, the competence of it had entertained her mind. She had respected, too, the courage which never failed Mrs. Clarke. But she was beginning to see her with new eyes. Perhaps Father Robertson had given his impulsive visitor a new moral vision.

During the conversation that afternoon at certain moments Lady Ingleton had almost hated Cynthia Clarke—when Cynthia had spoken of trying to wake up Dion Leith’s mind, of his not being an intellectual man, of Jimmy Clarke’s shrinking from him because of his deterioration. And when Cynthia had said that deterioration was “heart-rending” Lady Ingleton had quite definitely detested her. This feeling of detestation had persisted while, in the drawing-room, Cynthia was lovingly appreciating the new acquisition of Sevres. Lady Ingleton sickened now when she thought of the lovely hands sensitively touching, feeling, the thin china. There really was something appalling in the delicate mentality, in the subtle taste, of a woman in whom raged such devastating physical passions.

Lady Ingleton shuddered as she remembered her conversation with her “friend.” But it had brought about something. It had driven away any lingering regret of hers for having spoken frankly to Father Robertson. Cynthia was certainly tired of Dion Leith. Was she about to sacrifice him as she had sacrificed others? Lady Ingleton dreaded the future. For during the interview at the Adelphi Hotel she had realized Rosamund’s innate and fastidious purity. To forgive even one infidelity would be a tremendous moral triumph in such a woman as Rosamund. But if Cynthia Clarke threw Dion Leith away, and he fell into promiscuous degradation, then surely Rosamund’s nature would rise up in inevitable revolt. Even if she came to Constantinople then it would surely be too late.

Lady Ingleton had seen clearly enough into the mind of Cynthia Clarke, but there was hidden from her the greater part of a human drama not yet complete.

Combined with the ugly passion which governed her life, Mrs. Clarke had an almost wild love of personal freedom. As much as she loved to fetter she hated to be fettered. This hatred had led her into many difficulties during the course of her varied life, difficulties which had always occurred at moments when she wanted to get rid of people. Ever since she had grown up there had been recurring epochs when she had been tormented by the violent desire to rid herself of some one whom she had formerly longed for, whom she had striven to bind to her. Until now she had always eventually succeeded in breaking away from those who were beginning to involve her in weariness or to disgust her. There had sometimes been perilous moments, painful scenes, bitter recriminations. But by the exercise of her indomitable power of will, helped by her exceptional lack of scruple, she had always managed to accomplish her purpose. She had always found hitherto that she was more pitiless, and therefore more efficient, than anyone opposed to her in a severe struggle of wills. But Dion Leith was beginning to cause her serious uneasiness. She had known from the beginning of their acquaintance that he was an exceptional man; since his tragedy she had realized that the exceptional circumstances of his life had accentuated his individuality. In sorrow, in deterioration, he had broken loose from restraint. She had helped to make him what he had now become, the most difficult man she had ever had to deal with. When he had crossed the river to her he had burnt all the boats behind him. If he had sometimes been weak in goodness, in those former days long past, in what he considered as evil—Mrs. Clarke did not see things in white and black—he had developed a peculiar persistence and determination which were very like strength.

Looking back, Mrs. Clarke realized that the definite change in Dion, which marked the beginning of a new development, dated from the night in the garden at Buyukderer when Jimmy had so nearly learnt the truth. On that night she had forced Dion to save her reputation with her child by lying and playing the hypocrite to a boy who looked up to him and trusted in him. Dion had not forgotten his obedience. Perhaps he hated her because of it in some secret place of his soul. She was sure that he intended to make her pay for it. He had obeyed her in what she considered as a very trifling matter. (For of course Jimmy had to be deceived.) But since then he had often shown a bitter, even sometimes a brutal, disposition to make her obey him. She could not fully understand the measure of his resentment because she had none of his sense of honor and did not share his instinctive love of truth. But she knew he had suffered acutely in tricking and lying to Jimmy.

On that night, then, he had burnt his boats. She herself had told him to do it when she had said to him, “Give yourself wholly to me.” She was beginning to regret that she had ever said that.

At first, in her perversity, she had curiously enjoyed Dion’s misery. It had wrapped him in a garment that was novel. It had thrown about him a certain romance. But now she was becoming weary of it. She had had enough of it and enough of him. That horrible process, which she knew so well, had repeated itself once more: she had wanted a thing; she had striven for it; she had obtained it; she had enjoyed it (for she knew well how to enjoy and never thought that the game was not worth the candle). And then, by slow, almost imperceptible degrees, her power of enjoyment had begun to lessen. Day by day it had lost in strength. She had tried to stimulate it, to deceive herself about its decay, but the time had come, as it had come to her many times in the past, when she had been forced to acknowledge to herself that it was no longer living but a corpse. Dion Leith had played his part in her life. She wished now to put him outside of her door. She had made sacrifices for him; for him she had run risks. All that was very well so long as he had had the power to reward her. But now she was beginning to brood over those risks, those sacrifices, with resentment, to magnify them in her mind; she was beginning to be angry as she dwelt upon that which distortedly she thought of as her unselfishness.

After Jimmy had left Turkey to go back to Eton, and the summer had died, Mrs. Clarke had fulfilled her promise to Dion. She had settled at Pera for the winter, and she had arranged his life for him. From the moment of Jimmy’s departure Dion had given himself entirely to her. He had even given himself with a sort of desperation. She had been aware of his fierce concentration, and she had tasted it with a keenness of pleasure, she had savored it deliberately and fully in the way of an epicure. The force of his resolution towards evil—it was just that—had acted upon her abominably sensitive temperament as a strong tonic. That period had been the time when, to her, the game was worth the candle, was worth a whole blaze of candles.

Already, then, Dion had begun to show the new difficult man whom she, working hand in hand with sorrow, had helped to create within him; but she had at first enjoyed his crudities of temper, his occasional outbursts of brutality, his almost fierce roughness and the hardness which alternated with his moments of passion.

She had understood that he was flinging away with furious hands all the baggage of virtue he had clung to in the past, that he was readjusting his life, was reversing all the habits which had been familiar and natural to him in the existence with Rosamund. So much the better, she had thought. The fact that he was doing this proved to her her power over him. She had smiled, in her unsmiling way, upon his efforts to do what she had told him to do, to cut away the cancer that was in him and to cut away all that was round it. Away with the old moralities, the old hatred of lies and deceptions, the old love of sanity and purity of life.

But away, too, with the old reverence for, and worship of, the woman possessed.

Dion had taken to heart a maxim once uttered to him by Mrs. Clarke in the garden at Buyukderer. Mention had been made of the very foolish and undignified conduct of a certain woman in Pera society who had been badly treated by a young diplomat. In discussing the matter Dion had chanced to say:

“But if she does such things how can any man respect her?”

Mrs. Clarke’s reply, spoken with withering sarcasm, had been:

“Women don’t want to be respected by men.”

Dion had not forgotten that saying. It had sunk deep into his heart. He had come to believe it. Even when he thought of Rosamund still he believed it. He had respected her, and had shown his respect in the most chivalrous way at his command, and she had never really loved him. Evidently women were not what he had thought they were. Mrs. Clarke knew what they were and a thousand things that he did not know. He grasped at her cynicism, and he often applied it, translated through his personality, to herself. He even went farther in cynicism than she had ever gone, behaving like a convert to a religion which had the charm of novelty. He praised her for her capacities as a liar, a hypocrite, a subtle trickster, a thrower of dust in the eyes of her world. One of his favorite names for her was “dust-thrower.” Sometimes he abused her. She believed that at moments he detested her. But he clung to her and he did not mean to give her up. And she knew that.

After that horrible night when Jimmy had waked up she had succeeded in making Dion believe that he was deeply loved by her. She had really had an ugly passion for him, and she had contrived easily enough to dress it up and present it as love. And he clung to that semblance of love, because it was all that he had, because it was a weapon in his hand, and because he had made for it a sacrifice. He had sacrificed the truth that was in him, and he had received in part payment the mysterious dislike of the boy who had formerly looked up to him.

Jimmy had never been friendly with Dion since the night of their search for his mother in the garden.

His manner towards his mother had changed but little. He was slightly more reserved with her than he had been. Her faint air of sarcasm when, in Sonia’s room, he had shown her his boyish agitation, had made a considerable impression upon him. He was unable to forget it. And he was a little more formal with his mother; showed her, perhaps, more respect than before. But the change was trifling. His respect for Dion, however, was obviously dead. Indeed he had begun to show a scarcely veiled hostility towards Dion in the summer holidays, and in the recent Easter holidays, spent by him in Pera, he had avoided Dion as much as possible.

“That fellow still here!” he had said, with boyish gruffness, when his mother had first mentioned Dion’s name immediately after his arrival. And when he had seen Dion he had said straight out to his mother that he couldn’t “stand Leith at any price now.” She had asked him why, fixing her eyes upon him, but the only reply she had succeeded in getting had been that he didn’t trust the fellow, that he hadn’t trusted Leith for a long time.

“Since when?” she had said.

“Can’t remember,” had been the non-committal answer.

It seemed as if Jimmy had seen through Dion’s insincerity in the garden at Buyukderer. Yet there was nothing to show that he had not accepted his mother’s insincerity in Sonia’s room at its face value. Even Mrs. Clarke had not been able to understand exactly what was in her boy’s mind. But Jimmy’s hostility to Dion had troubled her obscurely, and had added to her growing weariness of this intrigue something more vital. Her intelligence divined, rather than actually perceived, the coming into her life of a definite menace to her happiness, if happiness it could be called. She felt as if Jimmy were on the track of her secret, and she was certain that Dion was the cause of the boy’s unpleasant new alertness. In the past she had taken risks for Dion. But she had had the great reason of what she chose to call passion. That reason was gone now. She was resolved not to take the greatest of all risks for a man whom she wanted to get rid of.

She was resolved; but she encountered now in Dion a resolve which she had not suspected he was capable of, and which began to render her seriously uneasy.

Lady Ingleton’s remark, “you look tired,” had struck unpleasantly on Mrs. Clarke’s ears, and she came away from the Embassy that day with them in her mind. She was on foot. As she came out through the great gateway of the Embassy she remembered that she had been coming from it on that day in June when she had seen Dion Leith for the first time in Pera. A sharp thrill had gone through her that day. He had come. He had obeyed the persistent call of her will. What she had desired for so long would be. And she had been fiercely glad for two reasons; one an ordinary reason, the other less ordinary. A mysterious reason of the mind. If her will had played her false for once, had proved inadequate, she would have suffered strangely. When she knew it had not she had triumphed. But now, as she walked onward slowly, she wished she had never seen Dion Leith in Pera, she wished that her will had played her false. It would have been better so, for she was in a difficult situation, and she foresaw that it was going to become more difficult. She was assailed by that recurring desire which is the scourge of the sensualist, the desire to rid herself violently, abruptly and forever of the possession she had schemed and made long efforts to obtain. Her torch was burnt out. She wished to stamp out the flame of another torch which still glowed with a baleful fire.

“And Delia has noticed something!” she thought.

The thought was scarcely out of her mind when she came face to face with Dion Leith. He stopped before her.

“Have you been to the Embassy?” he said.

“Yes. Delia Ingleton came back yesterday. You aren’t going to call there?”

“Of course not. I happened to see you walking in that direction, so I thought I would wait for you.”

With the manner of a man exercising a right he turned to walk back with her. A flame of irritation scorched her, but she did not show any emotion. She only said quietly:

“You know I am not particularly fond of being seen with men in the Grande Rue.”

“Very well. If you like, I’ll come to your flat by a round-about way. I’ll be there five minutes after you are.”

Before she had time to say anything he was gone, striding through the crowd.

Mrs. Clarke walked on and came into the Grande Rue.

She lived in a flat in a street which turned out of the Grande Rue on the left not very far from the Taxim Garden. As she walked on slowly she was trying to make up her mind to force a break with Dion. She had great courage and was naturally ruthless, yet for once she was beset by indecision. She did not any longer feel sure that she could dominate this man. She had bent him to her will when she took him; but could she do so when she wished to get rid of him?

When she reached the house, on the second floor of which was her flat, she found him there waiting for her.

“You must have walked very quickly, Dion,” she said.

“No, I didn’t,” he replied bruskly. “You walked very slowly.”

“I feel tired to-day.”

“I thought you were never tired.”

“Every woman is tired sometimes.”

They began to ascend the staircase. There was no lift.

“Are you going out to-night?” she heard him say behind her.

“No. I shall go to bed early.”

“I’ll stay till then.”

“You know you can’t stay very late here.”

She heard him laugh.

“When you’ve just said you are going to bed early!”

She said nothing more till they reached the flat. He followed her in and put his hat down.

“Will you have tea?”

“No, thanks; nothing.”

“Go into the drawing-room. I’ll come in a moment.”

She left him and went into her bedroom.

He waited for her in the drawing-room. At first he sat down. The room was full of the scent of flowers, and he remembered the strong flowery scent which had greeted him when he visited the villa at Buyukderer for the first time. How long ago that seemed—aeons ago! A few minutes passed, registered by the ticking of a little clock of exquisite bronze work on the mantelpiece. She did not come. He felt restless. He always felt restless in Constantinople. Now he got up and walked about the room, turning sharply from time to time, pausing when he turned, then resuming his walk. Once, as he turned, he found himself exactly opposite to a mirror. He stared into it and saw a man still young, but lined, with sunken eyes, a mouth drooping and bitter, a head on which the dark hair was no longer thick and springy. His hair had retreated from the temples, and this fact had changed his appearance, had lessened his good looks, and at the same time had given to his face an odd suggestion of added intellectuality which was at war with the plain stamp of dissipation imprinted upon it. Even in repose his face was almost horribly expressive.

As he stared into the glass he thought:

“If I cut off my mustache I should look like a tragic actor who was a thorough bad lot.”

He turned away, frowning, and resumed his walk. Presently he stood still and looked about the room. He was getting impatient. Irritability crept through him. He almost hated Mrs. Clarke for keeping him waiting so long.

“Why the devil doesn’t she come?” he thought.

He stood trying to control his nervous anger, clenching his muscular hands, and looking from one piece of furniture to another, from one ornament to another ornament, with quickly shifting eyes.

His attention was attracted by something unusual in the room which he had not noticed till now. On a writing-table of ebony near one of the windows he saw a large photograph in a curious frame of ruddy arbutus wood. He had never before seen a photograph in any room lived in by Mrs. Clarke, and he had heard her say that photographs killed a room, and might easily kill, too, with their staring impotence, any affection one felt for the friends they represented. Whose photograph could this be which triumphed over such a dislike? He walked to the table, bent down and saw a standing boy in flannels, bare-headed, with thick, disordered hair and bare arms, holding in his large hands a cricket bat. It was Jimmy, and his eyes looked straight into Dion’s.

A door clicked. There was a faint rustling. Mrs. Clarke walked into the room.

Dion turned round.

“What’s this photograph doing here?” he asked roughly.

“Doing?”

“Yes. You hate photographs. I’ve heard you say so.”

“Jimmy gave it to me on my birthday just before he left for England. It’s quite a good one.”

“You are going to keep it here?”

“Yes. I am going to keep it here. Come and sit down.”

He did not move.

“Jimmy loathes me,” he said.

“Nonsense.”

“He does. Through you he has come to loathe me, and you keep his photograph here——”

“I don’t allow any one to criticize what I do in my own drawing-room,” she interrupted. “You are really childish to-day.”

His intense irritability had communicated itself to her. She felt an almost reckless desire to get rid of him. His look of embittered wretchedness tormented her nerves. She wondered how it had ever been able to interest her, even to lure her. She was amazed at her own perversity.

“I cannot allow you to come here if you are going to try to interfere with my arrangements,” she added, with a sort of fierce coldness.

“I have a right to come here.”

“You have not. You have no rights over me, none at all. I have made a great many sacrifices for you, far too many, but I shall never sacrifice my complete independence for you or for any one.”

“Sacrifices for me!” he exclaimed.

He snatched up the photograph, held it with both his hands, exerted his strength, smashed the glass, broke the frame, tore the photograph in half, and threw it, the fragments of red wood and the bits of glass on the table.

“You’ve made your boy hate me, and you shan’t have him there,” he said savagely.

“How dare you!” she exclaimed, in a low, hoarse voice.

She flung out her hands. In snatching at the ruined photograph she picked up with it a fragment of glass. It cut her hand slightly, and a thin thread of blood ran down over her white skin.

“Oh, your hand!” exclaimed Dion, in a changed voice. “It’s bleeding!”

He pulled out his handkerchief.

“Leave it alone! I forbid you to touch it!”

She put the fragments of the photograph inside her dress, gently, tenderly even. Then she turned and faced him.

“To-morrow I shall telegraph to England for another photograph to be sent out, and it will stand here,” she said, pointing with her bleeding hand at the writing-table. “It will always stand on my table here and in the Villa Hafiz.”

Then she bound her own handkerchief about her hand and rang the bell. Sonia came.

“I’ve stupidly cut my hand, Sonia. Come and tie it up. Mr. Leith is going in a moment, and then you shall bathe it.”

Sonia looked at Dion, and, without a word, adjusted the handkerchief deftly, and pinned it in place with a safety-pin which she drew out of her dress. Then she left the room with her flat-footed walk. As she shut the door Dion said doggedly:

“You’d better let her bathe it now, because I’m not going in a moment.”

“When I ask you to go you will go.”

“Sit down. I must speak to you.”

He pointed to a large sofa. She went very deliberately to a chair and sat down.

“Why don’t you sit on the sofa?”

“I prefer this.”

He sat on the sofa.

“I must speak to you about Jimmy.”

“Well?”

“What’s the matter with him? What have you been up to with him?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why should he turn against me and not against you?”

“I don’t understand what you mean.”

“You do. It’s since that night in the garden when you made me lie to him. Ever since that night he’s been absolutely different with me. You know it.”

“I can’t help it.”

“He believed your lies to him, apparently. Why doesn’t he believe mine?”

“Of course he believed what you told him.”

“He didn’t, or he wouldn’t have changed. He hates your having anything to do with me. He’s told you so. I’m sure of it.”

“Jimmy would never dare to do that.”

“Anyhow, you know he does.”

She did not deny it.

“Remember this,” Dion said, looking straight at her, “I’m not going to be sacrificed a second time on account of a child.”

After a long pause, during which Mrs. Clarke sat without moving, her lovely head leaning against a cushion which was fastened near the top of the back of the chair, she said:

“What do you mean exactly by being sacrificed, Dion?”

Her manner had changed. The hostility had gone out of it. Her husky voice sounded gentle almost, and she looked at him earnestly.

“I mean just this: my life with the woman I once cared for was smashed to pieces by a child, my own dead child. I’m not going to allow my life with you to be smashed to pieces by Jimmy. Isn’t a man more than a child? Can’t he feel more than a child feels, give more than a child can give? Isn’t a thing full grown as valuable, as worth having as a thing that’s immature?”

He spoke with almost passionate resentment.

“D’you mean to tell me that a man’s love always means less to a woman than a child’s love means?”

Silently, while he spoke, she compared the passion she had had for Dion Leith with the love she would always have for Jimmy. The one was dead; the other could not die. That was the difference between such things.

“The two are so different that it is useless to compare them,” she replied. “Surely you could not be jealous of a child.”

“I could be jealous of anything that threatened me in my life with you. It’s all I’ve got now, and I won’t have it interfered with.”

“But neither must you attempt to interfere with my life with my child,” she said, very calmly.

“You dragged me into your life with Jimmy. You have always used Jimmy as a means. It began long ago in London when you were at Claridge’s.”

“There is no need—”

“There is need to make you see clearly why I have every right to take a stand now against—against——”

“Against what?”

“I feel you’re changing. I don’t trust you. You are not to be trusted. Since Jimmy has been here again I feel that you are different.”

“I am obliged to be specially careful now the boy is beginning to grow up. He notices things now he wouldn’t have noticed a year or two ago. And it will get worse from year to year. That isn’t my fault.”

His sunken eyes looked fixedly at her from the midst of the network of wrinkles which disfigured his face.

“Now what are you trying to lead up to?” he said.

“It’s very foolish of you to be always suspicious. Only stupid people are always suspecting others of sharp practise.”

“I’m stupid compared with you, but I’m not so stupid that I haven’t learnt to know you better than other people know you, better, probably, than any one else on earth knows you. It is entirely through you that Jimmy has got to hate me. I’m not going to let you use his hatred of me as a weapon against me. I’ve been wanting to tell you this, but I thought I’d wait till he had gone.”

“Why should I want to use a weapon against you?”

“I don’t know. It isn’t always easy to know why you want things. You’re such an inveterate liar, and so tricky that you’d puzzle the devil himself.”

“Do you realize that all you are saying to-day implies something? It implies that in your opinion I am not a free agent, that you consider you have a right to govern my actions. But I deny that.”

She spoke firmly, but without any heat.

“Do you mean to say that what we are to each other gives me no more rights over you than mere acquaintances have?”

“It gives you no more rights over me than mere acquaintances have.”

He sat looking at her for a minute. Then he said:

“Cynthia, come and sit here, please, beside me.”

“Why should I?”

“Please come.”

“Very well.”

She got up, came to the sofa with a sort of listless decision, and sat down beside him. He took her uninjured hand. His hand was burning with heat. He closed and unclosed his fingers as he went on speaking.

“What is there in such a relation as ours if it carries no rights? You have altered my whole life. Is that nothing? I live out here only because of you. I have nothing out here but you. All these months, ever since we left Buyukderer, I’ve lived just as you wished. I went into society at Buyukderer because you wished me to. When you didn’t care any more about my doing that I lived in the shade in Galata. I’ve fallen in with every deception you thought necessary, I’ve told every lie you wished me to tell. Ever since you made me lie to Jimmy I haven’t cared much. But you’ll never know, because you can’t understand such things, what the loss of Jimmy’s confidence and respect has meant to me. However, that’s all past. I’m as much of a hypocrite as you are; I’m as false as you are; I’m as rotten as you are—with other people. But don’t, for God’s sake, let’s be rotten with each other. That would be too foul, like thieves falling out.”

“I’ve always been perfectly straight with you,” she said coldly. “I have nothing to reproach myself with.”

The closing of his fingers on her hand, and their unclosing, irritated her whole body. To-day she disliked his touch intensely, so intensely that she could scarcely believe she had ever liked it, longed for it, schemed for it.

“Please keep your hand still!” she said.

“What?”

“It makes me nervous your doing that. Either hold my hand or don’t hold it.”

“I don’t understand. What was I doing?”

“Oh, never mind. I’ve always been straight with you. I don’t know why you are attacking me.”

“I feel you are changing towards me. So I thought I’d tell you that I don’t intend to be driven out a second time by a child. It’s better you should know that. Then you won’t attempt the impossible.”

She looked into his sunken eyes.

“Jimmy has got to dislike you,” she said. “It’s unfortunate, but it can’t be helped. I don’t know exactly why it is so. It may be because he’s older, just at the age when boys begin to understand about men and women. You’re not always quite so careful before him as you might be. I don’t mean in what you say, but in your manner. I think Jimmy fancies you like me in a certain way. I think he probably took it into his head that you were hanging about the garden that night because perhaps you hoped to meet me there. A very little more and he might begin to suspect me. You have been frank with me to-day. I’ll be frank with you. I want you to understand that if there ever was a question of my losing Jimmy’s love and respect I should fight to keep them, sacrifice anything to keep them. Jimmy comes first with me, and always will. It couldn’t be otherwise. I prefer that you should know it.”

He shot a glance at her that was almost cunning. She had been prepared for a perhaps violent outburst, but he only said:

“Jimmy won’t be here again for some time, so we needn’t bother about him.”

She was genuinely surprised, but she did not show it.

“It was you who brought up the question,” she said.

“Never mind. Don’t worry about it. If Jimmy comes out for the summer holidays——”

“He will, of course.”

“Then I can go away from Buyukderer just for those few weeks.”

“I——” She paused; then went on: “I must tell you that you mustn’t come to Buyukderer again this summer.”

“Then you won’t go there?”

“Of course I must go. I have the villa. I am going there next week.”

“If you go, then I shall go. But I’ll leave when Jimmy comes, as you are so fussed about him.”

She could scarcely believe that it was Dion who was speaking to her. Often she had heard him speak violently, irritably, even cruelly and rudely. But there was a sort of ghastly softness in his voice. His hand still held hers, but its grasp had relaxed. In his touch, as in his voice, there was a softness which disquieted her.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t let you come to Buyukderer this summer,” she said. “Once did not matter. But if you came again my reputation would suffer.”

“Then I’ll stay at some other place on the Bosporus and come over.”

“That would be just as bad.”

“Do you seriously mean that we are to be entirely separated during the whole of this summer?”

“I must be careful of my reputation now Jimmy’s growing up. The Bosporus is the home of malicious gossip.”

“Do answer my question. Do you mean that we are to be separated during the summer?”

“I don’t see how it can be helped.”

“It can be helped very easily. Don’t go to Buyukderer.”

“I must. I have the villa.”

“Let it.”

“I couldn’t possibly stand Constantinople in the summer.”

“There’s no need to do that. There are other places besides Constantinople and Buyukderer. You might go to one of them. Or you might travel.”

She sat down for a moment looking down.

“Do you mean that I might travel with you?” she said, at last.

“Not with me. But I could happen to be where you are.”

“That’s not possible. Some one would get to know of it.”

“How absurdly ingenue you have become all of a sudden!” he said, with soft, but scathing, irony.

And he laughed, let out a long, low, and apparently spontaneous laugh, as if he were genuinely amused.

“Really one would hardly imagine that you were the heroine of the famous divorce case which interested all London not so very long ago. When I remember the life you acknowledged you had lived, the life you were quite defiant about, I can’t help being amused by this sudden access of conventional Puritanism. You declared then that you didn’t choose to live a dull, orthodox life. One would suppose that the leopard could change his spots after all.”

While he was speaking she lifted her head and looked fixedly at him.

“It’s just that very divorce case which has made me alter my way of living,” she said. “Any one who knew anything of the world, any one but a fool, could see that.”

“Ah, but I am a fool,” he returned doggedly. “I was a fool when I ran straight, and it seems I’m a fool when I run crooked. You’ve got to make the best of me as I am. Take your choice. Go to Buyukderer if you like. If you do I shall stay on the Bosporus. Or travel if you like, and I’ll happen to be where you are. It’s quite easy. It’s done every day. But you know that as well as I do. I can’t give you points in the game of throwing dust in the eyes of the public.”

“It’s too late now to let the villa, even if I cared to. And I can’t afford to shut it up and leave it standing empty while I wander about in hotels. I shall go to Buyukderer next week.”

“All right. I’ll go back to the rooms I had last year, and we can live as we did then. Give me the key of the garden gate and I can use the pavilion as my sitting-room again. It’s all quite simple.”

A frown altered her white face. His mention of the pavilion had suddenly recalled to her exactly what she had felt for him last year. She compared it with what she felt for him now. With an impulsive movement she pulled her hand away from his.

“I shall not give you the key. I can’t have you there. I will not. People have begun to talk.”

“I don’t believe it. They never see us together here. You have taken good care of that in the last few months. Why, we’ve met like thieves in the night.”

“Here, yes. In a great town one can manage, but not in a place like Buyukderer.”

He leaned forward and said, with dogged resolution:

“One thing is certain—I will not be separated from you during the summer. Do whatever you like, but remember that. Make your own plans. I will fall in with them. But I shall pass the summer where you pass it.”

“I—really I didn’t know you cared so much about me,” she murmured, with a faint smile.

“Care for you!”

He stared into her face and the twinkles twitched about his eyes.

“How should I not care for you?”

He gripped her hand again.

“Haven’t you taught me how to live in the dust? Haven’t you shown me the folly of being honorable and the fun of deceiving others? Haven’t you led me into the dark and made me able to see in it? And there’s such a lot to see in the dark! Why, good God, Cynthia, you’ve made a man in your own image and then you’re surprised at his worshipping you. Where’s your cleverness?”

“I often believe you detest me.”

“Oh, as for that, a woman such as you are can be loved and hated almost at the same time. But she can’t be given up. No!”

As she looked at him she saw the red gleam of the torch he carried. Hers had long ago died out into blackness.

“Is it possible that you really wish to ruin my reputation?”

“Not a bit of it! You’re so clever that you can always guard against that.”

“Yes, I can when I’m dealing with gentlemen,” she said, with sudden, vicious sharpness. “But you are behaving like a cad. Of all the men I—”

She stopped. A sort of nervous fury possessed her. It had nearly driven her to make a false step. And yet—would it be a false step? As she paused, looking at Dion, marking the hard obstinacy in his eyes, feeling the hard, hot grip of his hand, it occurred to her that perhaps she had blundered upon the one way out, the way of escape. Amid the wreckage of his beliefs she knew that Dion still held to one belief, which had been shaken once, but which her cool adroitness had saved and made firm in a critical moment. If she destroyed it now would he let her go? Just how low had he fallen through her? She wished she knew. But she did not know, and she waited, looking at him.

“Go on!” he said. “Of all the men you—what?”

“How low down is he? How low down?” she asked herself.

“Can you go on?” he said harshly.

“Of all the men who have cared for me you are the only man who has ever dared to interfere with my freedom,” she said.

Her voice had become almost raucous, and a faint dull red strangely discolored and altered her face.

“I will not permit it. I shall go to Buyukderer, and I forbid you to follow me there. Now it’s getting late and I’m tired. Please go away.”

“Men who have cared for you!”

“Yes. Yes.”

“What d’you mean by that? D’you mean Brayfield?”

“Yes.”

“Have there been many others who have cared as Brayfield did?”

“Yes.”

“Hadi Bey was one of them, I suppose?”

“Yes.”

“And Dumeny was another?”

“Yes.”

“Poor fellows!”

His lips were smiling, but his eyes looked dreadfully intent and searching.

“You made them suffer and gave them no reward. I can see you doing it and enjoying it.”

“That’s untrue.”

“What is untrue?”

“To say that I gave them no reward.”

At this moment there was a tap on the door.

“Come in!” said Mrs. Clarke, in her ordinary voice.

Sonia opened the door and came in.

“Excuse me, Madame,” she said, “but you told me I was to bathe your hand. If it is not bathed it will look horrible to-morrow. I have the warm water all ready.”

She stood in front of her mistress, broad, awkward and yet capable. Dion felt certain this woman meant to get rid of him because she was aware that her mistress wanted him to go. He had always realized that Sonia knew Mrs. Clarke better than any other woman did. As for himself—she had never shown any feeling towards him. He did not know whether she liked him or disliked him. But now he knew that he disliked her.

He looked almost menacingly at her.

“Your mistress can’t go at present,” he said. “Her hand is all right. It was only a scratch.”

Sonia looked at her mistress.

“Sonia is quite right,” said Mrs. Clarke, getting up. “And as the water is warm I will go. Good-by.”

“I will stay here till you have finished,” he said, still looking at Sonia.

“It’s getting very late. We might finish our talk to-morrow.”

“I will stay.”

After a slight pause Mrs. Clarke, whose face was still discolored with red, turned to the maid and said:

“Go away, Sonia.”

Sonia went away very slowly. At the door she stopped for a moment and looked round. Then she disappeared, and the door closed slowly and as if reluctantly behind her.

“Now what did you mean?” Dion said.

He got up.

“What did you mean?”

“Simply this, that my husband ought to have won his case.”

“Ah!”

He stood with his hands hanging at his sides, looking impassive, with his head bent and the lids drooping over his eyes. She waited—for her freedom. She did not mind the disgust which she felt like an emanation in the darkening room, if only it would carry him far enough in hatred of her. Would it do that?

There was a very long silence between them. During it he remained motionless. With his hanging hands and his drooping head he looked, she thought, almost as much like a puppet as like a man. His whole body had a strange aspect of listlessness, almost of feebleness. Yet she knew how muscular and powerful he still was, although he had long ago ceased from taking care of his body. The silence lasted so long, and he stood so absolutely still, that she began to feel uneasy, even faintly afraid. The nerves in her body were tingling. They could have braced themselves to encounter violence, but this immobility and dumbness tormented them. She wanted to speak, to move, but she felt obliged to wait for him. At last he looked up. He came to her, lifted his hands and laid them heavily on her emaciated shoulders.

“So that’s what you are!”

He stared into her haggard face. She met his eyes resolutely.

“That’s what you are!”

“Yes.”

“Why have you told me this to-day?”

“Of course you knew it long ago.”

“Answer me. Why have you told me to-day?”

“I don’t know.”

“I do. You have told me to-day because you have had enough of me. You meant to use Jimmy to get rid of me as you once used him to get to know me more intimately. When you found that wouldn’t serve your turn, you made up your mind to speak a word or two of truth. You thought you would disgust me into leaving you.”

“Of course you knew it long ago,” she repeated in a dull voice.

“I didn’t know it. I might have suspected it. In fact, once I did, and I told you so. But you drove out my suspicion. I don’t know exactly how. And since then—after you got your verdict in London I saw Dumeny smile at you as he went out of the Court. I have never been able to forget that smile. Now I understand it. One by one you’ve managed to get rid of them all. And now at last you’ve arrived at me, and you’ve said to yourself, ‘It’s his turn to be kicked out now.’ Haven’t you?”

“Nothing can last forever,” she murmured huskily.

“No. But this time you’re not going to scrawl ‘finis’ exactly when you want to.”

“It’s getting dark, and I’m tired. My hand is hurting me.”

He gripped her shoulders more firmly.

“If you meant some day to get rid of me, to kick me out as you’ve kicked out the others,” he said grimly, “you shouldn’t have made me come to you that night when Jimmy was at Buyukderer. That was a mistake on your part.”

“Why?” she asked, almost in a whisper.

“Because that night through you I lost something; I lost the last shred of my self-respect. Till that night I was still clinging on to it. You struck my hands away and made me let go. Now I don’t care. And that’s why I’m not going to let you make the sign of the cross over me and dismiss me into hell. Your list closes with me, Cynthia. I’m not going to give you up.”

She shook slightly under his hands.

“Why are you trembling?”

“I’m not trembling; but I’m tired; let me alone.”

“You can go to Sonia now if you like, and have your hand bathed.”

He lifted his hands from her shoulders, but she did not move.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“I shall wait for you here.”

“Wait for me?”

“Yes. We’ll dine together to-night.”

“Where?” she said helplessly.

“Here, if you like.”

“There’s scarcely anything to eat. I didn’t intend——”

“I’ll take you out somewhere. It’s going to be a dark night. We’ll manage so that no one sees us. We’ll dine together and, after dinner——”

“I must come home early. I’m very tired.”

“After dinner we’ll go to those rooms you found so cleverly near the Persian Khan.”

She shuddered.

“Now go and bathe your hand, and I’ll wait here. Only don’t be too long or I shall come and fetch you. And don’t send Sonia to make excuses, for it will be no use.”

He sat down on the sofa.

She stood for a moment without moving. She put her bandaged hand up to her discolored face. Then she went slowly out of the room.

He sat waiting for her to come back, with his elbows on his knees and his face hidden in his hands.

He felt like a man sunk in mire. He felt the mire creeping up to his throat.

Almost at that same hour beside a platform at Victoria Station in London a long train with “Dover” placarded on it was drawn up. Before the door of a first-class carriage two women in plain traveling dresses were standing with a white-haired clergyman. Presently the shorter of the two women said to the other:

“I think I’ll get in now, and leave you to last words.”

She held out her hand to the clergyman.

“Good-by, Father Robertson.”

He grasped her hand warmly, and looked at her with a great tenderness shining in his eyes.

“Take good care of her. But you will, I know,” he said.

Beatrice Daventry got into the carriage, and stood for a moment at the door. There were tears in her eyes as she looked at the two figures now pacing slowly up and down on the platform; she wiped them away quickly, and sat down. She was bound on a long journey. And what would be the end? In her frail body Beatrice had a strong soul, but to-night she was stricken with a painful anxiety. She said to herself that she cared about something too much. If the object of this journey were not attained she felt it would break her heart. She shut her eyes, and she conjured up a child whom she had loved very much and who was dead.

“Come with us, Robin!” she whispered. “Come with us to your father.”

And the whisper was like a prayer.

“Beattie!”

Rosamund’s voice was speaking.

“We are just off.”

“Are we?”

“Take your seats, please!” shouted a loud bass voice.

There was a sound of the banging of doors.

Rosamund leaned out of the window.

“Good-by, Father!”

The train began to move.

“Good-by. Cor meum vigilat.”

Rosamund pulled down her veil quickly over her face.

She was weary of rebellion. Yet she knew that deep down within her dwelt one who was still a rebel. She was starting on a great journey but she could not foresee what would happen at its end. For she no longer knew what she was capable of doing, and what would be too great a task for her poor powers. She was trying; she would try; that was all she knew.

As the train pushed on through the fading light she said to herself again and again:

“La divina volontate! La divina volontate!”