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