ust 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