tly 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