“How can a child understand the needs of a woman like me and of a man like you?  How can he look into our hearts or read the secrets of our natures—­secrets which we can’t help having?  You hate what you call deceiving him.  But he will never think about it.  A boy of Jimmy’s age never thinks about his mother in that way.”

“I know.  That’s just it!”

“What do you mean?”

But he did not explain.  Perhaps instinctively he felt that her natural subtlety could not be in accord with his natural sincerity, felt that in discussing certain subjects they talked in different languages.  She put her arms round his neck.

“I need the two lives,” she said, in a very low voice.  “I need Jimmy and I need you.  Is it so very wonderful?  Often when a woman who isn’t old loses her husband and is left with her child people say, ’It’s all right for her.  She has got her child.’  And so she’s dismissed to her motherhood, as if that must be quite enough for her.  Dion, Dion, the world doesn’t know, or doesn’t care, how women suffer.  Women don’t speak about such things.  But I am telling you because I don’t want to have secrets from you.  I have suffered.  Perhaps I have some pride in me.  Anyhow, I don’t care to go about complaining.  You know that.  You must have found that out in London.  I keep my secrets, but not from you.”

She put her white cheek against his brown one.

“It’s only the two lives joined together that make life complete for a woman who is complete, who isn’t lopsided, lacking in something essential, something that nature intends.  I am a complete woman, and I’m not ashamed of it.  Do you think I ought to be?”

She sighed against his cheek.

“You are a courageous woman,” he said; “I do know that.”

“Don’t you test my courage.  Perhaps I’m getting tired of being courageous.”

She put her thin lips against his.

“It’s acting—­deception I hate,” he murmured.  “With a boy especially I like always to be quite open.”

Again he thought of Robin and of his old ideal of a father’s relation to his son; he thought of his preparation to be worthy of fatherhood, worthy to guide a boy’s steps in the path towards a noble manhood.  And a terrible sense of the irony of life almost overcame him.  For a moment he seemed to catch a glimpse of the Creator laughing in darkness at the aspiration of men; for a moment he was beset by the awful conviction that the world is ruled by a malign Deity.

“All the time Jimmy is at Buyukderer we’ll just be friends,” said the husky voice against his cheek.

The sophistry of her remark struck home to him, but he made no comment upon it.

“There are white deceptions,” she continued, “and black deceptions, as there are white and black lies.  Whom are we hurting, you and I?”

“Whom are we hurting?” he said, releasing himself from her.

And he thought of God in a different way—­in Rosamund’s way.