His eyes rested on Margaret as he spoke, and lingered afterwards, with a look that did not escape her.  She had seen him swayed by passion, more than once, and almost mad for her, and she had been frightened though she had dominated him.  What she saw in his face now was not that; it was more like affection, faithful and lasting, and it touched her English nature much more than any show of passion could.

‘Thank you,’ she said quietly.

They did not talk much more while they finished the short dinner, but when they were going back to the drawing-room Margaret took his arm, in foreign fashion, which she had never done before when they were alone.  Then he stood before the mantelpiece and watched her in silence as she moved about the room; for she was one of those women who always find half a dozen little things to do as soon as they get back from dinner, and go from place to place, moving a reading lamp half an inch farther from the edge of a table, shutting a book that has been left open on another, tearing up a letter that lies on the writing-desk, and slightly changing the angle at which a chair stands.  It is an odd little mania, and the more people there are in the room the less the mistress of the house yields to it, and the more uncomfortable she feels at being hindered from ‘tidying up the room,’ as she probably calls it.

Logotheti watched Margaret with keen pleasure, as every step and little movement showed her figure in a slightly different attitude and light, indiscreetly moulded in the perfection of her matchless gown.  In less than two minutes she had finished her trip round the room and was standing beside him, her elbows resting on the mantelpiece, while she moved a beautiful Tanagra a little to one side and then to the other, trying for the twentieth time how it looked the best.

‘There is no denying it,’ Logotheti said at last, with profound conviction.  ’I do not care a straw what becomes of any living creature but you.’

She did not turn her head, and her fingers still touched the Tanagra, but he saw the rare blush spread up the cheek that was turned to him; and because she stopped moving the statuette about, and looked at it intently, he guessed that she was not colouring from annoyance at what he had said.  She blushed so very seldom now, that it might mean much more than in the old days at Versailles.

‘I did not think it would last so long,’ she said gently, after a little while.

‘What faith can one expect of a Greek!’

He laughed, too wise in woman’s ways to be serious too long just then.  But she shook her head and turned to him with the smile he loved.

‘I thought it was something different,’ she said.  ’I was mistaken.  I believed you had only lost your head for a while, and would soon run after some one else.  That’s all.’

‘And the loss is permanent.  That’s all!’ He laughed again as he repeated her words.  ’You thought it was “something different”—­do you know that you are two people in one?’