“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 brown face was twitching.

“Suppose you had to choose between Jimmy and me!”

He was thinking of Robin and Rosamund.  A child had conquered him once.  Now once again a child—­for Jimmy was no more than a child as yet, although he thought himself important and almost a young man—­intruded into his life with a woman.

“I shall not have to choose.  But I have told you that a child is not enough for the happiness of a woman like me.  You know what I am, and you must know I am speaking the truth.”

“Did you love your husband?” he asked, staring into her eyes.

“Yes,” she replied, without even a second of hesitation.  “I did till he suspected me.”

“And then——­”

“Not after that,” she said grimly.

“I wonder he let you do all you did.”

“What do you mean?”

She let his hand go.

“I would never have let you go about with other men, however innocently.  I thought about that at your trial.”

“I should never let any one interfere with my freedom of action.  If a man loves me I expect him to trust me.”

“You don’t trust me.”

“Sometimes you almost hate me.  I know that.”

“Sometimes I hate everybody, myself most of all.  But I should miss you.  You are the only woman in all the world who wants me now.”

Suddenly a thought of his mother intruded into his mind, and he added: 

“Wants me as a lover.”

She got up quickly, almost impulsively, and went close to him.

“Yes, I want you, I want you as a lover, and I can’t let you go.  That is why I ask you, I beg you, to stay with me while Jimmy’s here.”

She leaned against him, and put her small hands on his shoulders.