“He ought to go to her.  He ought to force her to see the evil she is doing.”

“Leith will never do that, I feel sure,” said Sir Carey gravely.  “And in his place I don’t know that I could.”

Lady Ingleton looked at him with an almost sharp impatience such as she seldom showed him.

“When a man has right on his side he ought to browbeat a woman!” she exclaimed.  “And even if he is in the wrong it’s the best way to make a woman see things through his eyes.  Dion Leith is too delicate with women.”

After a moment she added: 

“At any rate with some women, the first of whom is his own wife.  A man should always put up a big fight for a really big thing, and Dion Leith hasn’t done that!”

“He fought in South Africa for England.”

“Ah,” she said, lifting her chin, “that sort of thing is so different.”

“Tell him what you think,” said the Ambassador.

“I know him so little.  But perhaps—­who knows—­some day I shall.”

She said no more on that subject.

Meanwhile Dion was teaching Jimmy, who was really full of the happiest ignorance.  Jimmy’s knowledge of Greek was a minus quantity, and he said frankly that he considered all that kind of thing “more or less rot.”  Nevertheless, Dion persevered.  One morning when they were going to get to work as usual in the pavilion,—­chose by Mrs. Clarke as the suitable place for his studies,—­taking up the Greek Grammar Dion opened it by chance.  He stood by the table from which he had picked the book up staring down at the page.  By one of those terrible rushes of which the mind is capable he was swept back to the famous mound which fronts the plain of Marathon; he saw the curving line of hills, the sea intensely blue and sparkling, empty of ships, the river’s course through the tawny land marked by the tall reeds and the sedges; he heard the distant lowing of cattle coming from that old battlefield, celebrated by poets and historians.  And then he heard, as if just above him, the dry crackle of brushwood—­Rosamund moving in the habitation of Arcady.  And he remembered the cry, the intense human cry which had echoed in the recesses of his soul on that day long—­how long—­ago in Greece, “Whither?  Whither am I and my great love going?  To what end are we journeying?”

He heard again that cry of his soul in the pavilion at Buyukderer, and beneath the sunburn his lean cheeks went lividly pale.

Reluctantly Jimmy was getting an exercise book and a pen and ink out of the drawer of a table, which Mrs. Clarke had had specially made for the lessons by a little Greek carpenter who sometimes did odd jobs for her.  He found the ink bottle almost empty.

“I say,” he began.

He looked up.

“I say, Mr. Leith——­”

His voice died away and he stared.

“What’s wrong?” he managed to bring out at last.

He thrust out a hand and laid hold of the grammar.  Dion let it go.