“Let the spirit die,” he thought, “that the body may live!”

He put one arm round his companion.

“If you want me——­” he whispered, on a deep breath.

His voice died away in the darkness between the giant cypresses, those trees which watch over the dead in the land of the Turk.

She had said once that the human being can hurt God.

Obscurely he wished to do that.

CHAPTER VI

Mrs. Clarke looked up from a letter written in a large boyish hand which had just been brought out on the terrace of the fountain by the butler.

“Jimmy will be here on Thursday—­that is, in Constantinople.  The train ought to be in early in the morning.”

Her eyes rested on Dion for a moment; then she looked down again at the letter from Eton.

“He’s in a high state of spirits at the prospect of the journey.  But perhaps I oughtn’t to have had him out; perhaps I ought to have gone to England for his holidays.”

“Do you mean because of me?” said Dion.

“I was thinking of cricket,” she replied impassively.

He was silent.  After a moment she continued: 

“There are no suitable companions for him out here.  I wish the Ingletons had a son.  Of course there is riding, swimming, boating, and we can make excursions.  You’ll be good to him, won’t you?”

She folded the letter up and put it into the envelope.

“I always keep all Jimmy’s letters,” she said.

“Look here!” Dion said in a hard voice.  “I think I’d better go.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

“Have I asked you to go?”

“No, but I think I shall clear out.  I don’t feel like acting a part to a boy.  I’ve never done such a thing, and it isn’t at all the sort of thing I could do well.”

“There will be no need to act a part.  Be with Jimmy as you were in London.”

“Look at me!” he exclaimed with intense bitterness.  “Am I the man I was in London?”

“If you are careful and reasonable, Jimmy won’t notice any difference.  Hero worship doesn’t look at things through a microscope.  Jimmy’s got his idea of you.  It will be your fault if he changes it.”

“Did you tell him I should be here during the holidays?”

“Yes.”

“I can’t help that,” he said, almost brutally.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you answered for me before you knew where I should be.”

He got up from the straw chair on which he was sitting, almost as if he meant to go away from her and from Buyukderer at once.

“Dion, you mustn’t go,” she said inflexibly.  “I can’t let you.  For if you go, you will never come back.”

“How do you know that?”

“I do know it.”

They looked at each other across the fountain; his eyes fell at last almost guiltily before her steady glance.