impression upon you?"

"A few men can be tormented. He is one of them. He has gone down into
the dark places. Perhaps the Furies are with him there, the attendants
of the Goddess of Death."

He glanced at his companion. She was standing absolutely still, gazing
down into the water. Her white face looked beautiful, but strangely
haggard and implacable in the night. And for a moment his mind dwelt on
the image conjured up by his last words, and he thought of her as the
Goddess of Death.

"Well," he said, "I must go, or Delia will be wondering. She knows your
power."

"And knows I am too faithful to her not to resist yours."

He pressed her hand, then said rather abruptly:

"Are you feverish to-night?"

"No," said Mrs. Clarke, almost with the hint of a sudden irritation. "I
am never feverish."

Sir Carey went away to his caique.

When he had gone Mrs. Clarke stood alone by the fountain for a moment,
frowning, and with her thin lips closely compressed, almost, indeed,
pinched together. She gazed down at her hands. They were lovely hands,
small, sensitive, refined; they looked clever, too, not like tapering
fools. She knew very well how lovely they were, yet now she looked at
them with a certain distaste. Betraying hands! Abruptly she extended
them towards the fountain, and let the cool silver of the water spray
over them. And as she watched the spray she thought of the wrinkles
about Dion's eyes.

"Ah, ma chere, qu'est que vous faites la toute seule? Vous prenez un
bain?"

The powerful contralto of Madame Davroulos flowed out from the
drawing-room, and her alluring mustache appeared at the lighted French
windows.

Mrs. Clarke dried her hands with a minute handkerchief, and, without
troubling about an explanation, turned away from the rose garden. But
when her two guests were gone she told her Greek butler to bring out an
arm-chair and a foot-stool, and the Russian maid, whom Dion had seen, to
bring her a silk wrap. Then she sent them both to bed, lit a cigarette
and sat down by the fountain, smoking cigarette after cigarette quickly.
Not till the freshness of dawn was in the air, and a curious living
grayness made the tangled rose bushes look artificial and the fountain
strangely cold, did she get up to go to bed.

She looked very tired; but she always looked tired, although she
scarcely knew what physical fatigue was. The gray of dawn grew about her
and emphasized her peculiar pallor, the shadows beneath