s, was still trying to hear all the
old voices. He required of her, as it were, that she should be good in
her evil, gentle while she destroyed. Well, she would even be that. A
rare smile curved her thin lips, but he did not see it.

"Suppose I told you that you were one of many?" she said. "Would you
give it all up?"

"I don't know. Am I?"

"No. Do you think, if you were, I should have kept my women friends,
Tippie Chetwinde, Delia Ingleton and all the rest?"

"I suppose not," he said.

But he remembered tones in Mrs. Chetwinde's voice when she had spoken of
"Cynthia Clarke," and even tones in Lady Ingleton's voice.

"They stuck to me because they believed in me. What other reason could
they have?"

"Unless they were very devoted to you."

"Women aren't much given to that sort of thing," she said dryly.

"I think you have an unusual power of making people do what you wish.
It is like an emanation," he said slowly. "And it seems not to be
interfered with by distance."

She leaned till her cheek touched his.

"Dion, I wish to make you forget. I know how it is with you. You suffer
abominably because you can't forget. I haven't succeeded with you yet.
But wait, only wait, till Jimmy goes, till the summer is over and we can
leave the Bosporus. It's all too intimate--the life here. We are all too
near together. But in Constantinople I know ways. I'll stay there all
the winter for you. Even the Christmas holidays--I'll give them up for
once. I want to show you that I do care. For no one else on earth would
I give up being with Jimmy in his holidays. For no one else I'd risk
what I'm risking to-night."

"Jimmy was asleep when you came?"

"Yes, but he might wake. He never does, but he might wake just
to-night."

"Suppose he did! Suppose he looked for you in your room and didn't find
you! Suppose he came up here!"

"He won't!"

She spoke obstinately, almost as if her assertion of the thing's
impossibility must make it impossible.

"And yet there's the risk of it," said Dion--"the great risk."

"There are always risks in connection with the big things in life. We
are worth very little if we won't take them."

"If it wasn't for Jimmy would you come and live with me? Would you drop
all this deception? Would you let your husband divorce you? Would you
give up your place in society for me? I am an outcast. Would you come
and be an outcast with me?"

"Yes, if it wasn't for Jimmy."

"And for Jimmy you'd giv