His eyes searched the page.

“What’s up, Mr. Leith?”

He looked frankly puzzled and almost afraid.  He had never seen any one look just like that before.

There was a moment of silence.  Then, with a sudden change of manner, Dion exclaimed: 

“Come on, Jimmy!  I don’t feel like doing lessons this morning.  I vote we go out.  I’m going to ask your mother if we can ride to the Belgrad forest.  Perhaps she’ll come with us.”

He was suddenly afraid to remain alone with the boy, and he felt that he could not stay in that pavilion full of the atmosphere of feverish passion, of secrecy, of betrayal.  Yes, of betrayal!  For there he had betrayed the obstinate love, which he had felt at Marathon as a sort of ecstasy, and still felt, but now like a wound, within him in spite of Rosamund’s rejection of him.  Not yet had the current taken him and swept him away from all the old landmarks.  Perhaps it never would.  And yet he had given himself to it, he had not tried to resist.

Jimmy jumped up with alacrity, though he still looked rather grave and astonished.  They went down the terraced garden to the villa.

“Run up and ask your mother,” said Dion.  “Probably she’s in her sitting-room.  I’ll wait here to know what she says.”

“Right you are!”

He went off, looking rather relieved.

Robin at fifteen!  Dion shut his eyes.

Jimmy was away for more than ten minutes.  Then he came back to say that his mother would come with them to the forest and would be ready in an hour’s time.

“I’ll go back to my rooms, change my breeches, and order the horses,” said Dion.

He was longing to get away from the scrutiny which at this moment Jimmy could not forego.  He knew that Jimmy had been talking about him to Mrs. Clarke, had probably been saying how “jolly odd” he had been in the pavilion.  For once the boy’s tact had failed him, and Dion’s sensitiveness tingled.

An hour later they were on horseback and rode into the midst of the forest.  At the village of Belgrad they dismounted, left the horses in the care of a Turkish stableman, and went for a walk among the trees.  It was very hot and still, and presently Mrs. Clarke said she would sit down and rest.

“You and Jimmy go on if you want to,” she said.

But Jimmy threw himself down on the ground.

“I’m tired.  It’s so infernally hot.”

“Take a nap,” said his mother.

The boy laid his head on his curved arms sideways.  Mrs. Clarke leaned down and put his panama hat over his left cheek and eye.

“Thank you, mater,” he murmured.

He lay still.

Dion had stood by with an air of hesitation during this little talk between mother and son.  Now he looked away to the forest.

“You go,” Mrs. Clarke said to him.  “You’ll find us here when you come back.  The Armenians call the forest Defetgamm.  Perhaps you will come under its influence.”