, he
turned quickly away and disappeared among the trees.

Jimmy slept with his face hidden, and Mrs. Clarke, with wide-open eyes,
sat motionless staring into the forest.

When they reached the Villa Hafiz late in the afternoon Dion helped
Mrs. Clarke to dismount. As she slid down lightly from the saddle she
whispered, scarcely moving her lips:

"The pavilion to-night eleven. You've got the key."

She patted Selim's glossy black neck.

"Come, Jimmy!" she said. "Say good night to Mr. Leith. I'm sure he's
tired and has had more than enough of us for to-day. We'll give him a
rest from us till to-morrow."

And Jimmy bade Dion good-by without any protest.

As Dion rode off Mrs. Clarke did not turn to look after him. She had
not troubled even to question him with her eyes. She had assumed that he
would do what she wanted. Would he do that?

At first he believed that he would not go. He had been away in the
forest with his misery for nearly two hours, struggling among the
shadows of the trees. Jimmy had seen in the pavilion that morning that
his "holiday tutor" was strangely ill at ease, and had discussed the
matter with his mater, and asked her why on earth the sight of a page
of Greek grammar should make a fellow stand staring as if he were
confronted by a ghost. But Jimmy had no conception of what Dion had
been through in the forest, where happy Greeks and Armenians were lazily
enjoying the empty hours of summer, forgetting yesterday, and serenely
careless of to-morrow.

In the forest Dion had fought with an old love of which he began to be
angrily ashamed, with a love which was now his greatest enemy, a thing
contemptible, inexplicable. In the pavilion that morning it had suddenly
risen up before him strong, intense, passionate. It seemed irresistible.
But he was almost furiously resolved not merely to resist it, but to
crush it down, to break it in pieces, or to drive it finally out of his
life.

And he had fought with it alone in the forest which the Armenians call
_Defetgamm_. And in the forest something--some adherent, it seemed--had
whispered to him, "To kill your enemy you must fill your armory with
weapons. The woman who came to you when you were neither in one world
nor in the other is a weapon. Why have you ceased to use her?"

And now, as if she had heard the voice of that adherent, and had known
of the struggle in the forest, the woman herself had suddenly broken
through the reserve she had imposed