the short walk to the Villa
Hafiz. The night was dark and cloudy and very still. Dion walked quickly
and surreptitiously, not looking at any of the people who went by him
in the darkness. All the windows of the villa which faced the sea were
shuttered and showed no lights. He turned to the right, stood before the
garden gate and listened. He heard no sound except a distant singing on
the oily waters of the Bay. Softly he put his key into the gate, gently
unlocked it, stepped into the garden. A few minutes later he was on the
highest terrace and approached the pavilion. As he did so Mrs. Clarke
came out of the drawing-room of the villa, passed by the fountain, and
began to ascend the garden.

She was dressed in black and in a material that did not rustle. Her thin
figure did not show up against the night, and her light slow footfall
was scarcely audible on the paths and steps as she went upward. Jimmy
had gone to bed long ago, tired out with the long ride in the heat.
She had just been into his bedroom, without a light, and had heard his
regular breathing. He was fast asleep, and once he was asleep he never
woke till the light of day shone in at the window. It was a comfort that
one could thoroughly rely on the sleeping powers of a healthy boy of
fifteen.

She sighed as she thought of Jimmy. The boy was going to complicate
her life. She was by nature an unusually fearless woman, but she was
beginning to realize that there might come a time when she would know
fear--unless she could begin to live differently as Jimmy began to
grow up. But how could she do that? There are things which seem to be
impossible even to strong wills. Her will was very strong, but she had
always used it not to renounce but to attain, not to hold her desires in
check but to bring them to fruition. And it was late in the day to begin
reversing the powerful engine of her will. She was not even sure that
she could reverse it. Hitherto she had never genuinely tried to do that.
She did not want to try now, partly--but only partly--because she hated
to fail in anything she undertook. And she had a suspicion, which she
was not anxious to turn into a certainty, that she who had ruled many
people was only a slave herself. Perhaps some day Jimmy would force her
to a knowledge of her exact condition.

For the first time in her life she was half afraid of that mysterious
energy which men and women call love; she began to understand, with
a sort of ample f