came back feeling as if I'd got
something to show, not much, but something, for my work. Then the crash
came, and I thought I knew sorrow and horror down to the bones. But I
didn't. I've only got to know them to the bones here. You've made
me know them. If you'd loved me I should never have complained, have
attacked you, been brutal to you; but when I think that you've never
cared a rap about me, never cared for anything but my body, and
that--that----" his voice broke for a moment; then he recovered himself
and went on, more harshly,--"and that merely from desire, or whatever
you choose to call it, you've sent the last stones of my building to
dust, I sometimes feel as if I could murder you. If you meant to kick
me out and be free of me when you had had enough of me, you should
never have brought Jimmy into the matter; for in a way you could never
understand Jimmy was linked up with my boy, with Robin. When you made
me earn Jimmy's hatred by being utterly false to all I really was, you
separated me from my boy. I killed him, but till then I was
sometimes near him. Ever since that night of lying and dirty pretense
he's--he's--I've lost him. You've taken my boy from me. Why should I
leave you yours?"

"But you're mad--when my boy's alive and--"

"And so's mine!"

She stared at him in silence.

"You can't give him back to me. Jimmy shrinks from me not because of
what I've done, but because of what I've become, and my boy feels as
Jimmy does. He--he----"

Mrs. Clarke pushed back her chair bruskly. She was now feeling really
afraid. She longed to call in Sonia. She wished the other servants were
in the flat instead of at Buyukderer.

"You boy's dead," she said, dully, obstinately. "Jimmy has nothing to do
with him--never had anything to do with him. And as for me, I have never
interfered between you and your child."

She got up. So did he.

"Never, never!" she repeated. "But your mind is warped and you don't
know what you're saying."

"I do. But we won't argue about it. You're a materialist and you can't
understand the real things."

His own words seemed suddenly to strike upon him like a great blow.

"The real things!" he exclaimed. "I've lost them all for ever. But I'll
keep what I've got. I'll keep what I've got. You hate me and I hate you,
but we belong to each other and we'll stick together, and Jimmy must
make up his mind to it. Once you said that if he was twenty-one you'd
tell him all about it. If you