't want to be at Buyukderer while he's with you."

"And you have rowed all the way from Buyukderer to Constantinople,
without even a brush and comb, to tell me that!"

"I told you at Buyukderer."

"And we decided that it would be much jollier for Jimmy to have you
there for his holidays. I depend upon you to make things tolerable
for Jimmy. You know how few people there are near us who would trouble
themselves about a boy. You will be my stand-by with Jimmy all through
his holidays."

She spoke serenely, even cheerfully, but there was a decisive sound in
her voice, and the eyes fixed upon him were full of determination.

"I can't understand how you can be willing to act a lie to your own boy,
especially when you care for him so much," said Dion, almost violently.

"I shall not act a lie."

"But you will."

"Sometimes you are horribly morbid," she said coldly.

"Morbid! Because I want to keep a young schoolboy out of--"

"Take care, Dion!" she interrupted hastily.

"If you--you don't really love Jimmy," he said.

"I forbid you to say that."

"I will say it. It's true."

And he repeated with a cruelly deliberate emphasis:

"You don't really love Jimmy."

Her white face was suddenly flooded with red, which even covered her
forehead to the roots of her hair. She put up one hand with violence and
tried to strike Dion on the mouth. He caught her wrist.

"Be quiet!" he said roughly.

Gripping her wrist with his hard, muscular brown fingers he repeated:

"You don't love Jimmy."

"Do you wish me to hate you?"

"I don't care. I don't care what happens to me."

She sat looking down. The red began to fade out of her face. Presently
she curled her fingers inwards against his palm and smiled faintly.

"I am not going to quarrel with you," she said quietly.

He loosened his grip on her; but now she caught and held his hand.

"I do love Jimmy, and you know it when you aren't mad. But I care for
you, too, and I am not going to lose you. If you went away while Jimmy
was out here I should never see you again. You would disappear. Perhaps
you would cross over to Asia."

Her great eyes were fixed steadily upon him.

"Ah, you have thought of that!" she said, almost in a whisper.

He was silent.

"Women would get hold of you. You would sink; you would be ruined,
destroyed. I know!"

"If I were it wouldn't matter."

"To me it would. I can't risk it. I am not going to risk it."

Dion leaned forward. His