“No.  Do you think, if you were, I should have kept my women friends, Tippie Chetwinde, Delia Ingleton and all the rest?”

“I suppose not,” he said.

But he remembered tones in Mrs. Chetwinde’s voice when she had spoken of “Cynthia Clarke,” and even tones in Lady Ingleton’s voice.

“They stuck to me because they believed in me.  What other reason could they have?”

“Unless they were very devoted to you.”

“Women aren’t much given to that sort of thing,” she said dryly.

“I think you have an unusual power of making people do what you wish.  It is like an emanation,” he said slowly.  “And it seems not to be interfered with by distance.”

She leaned till her cheek touched his.

“Dion, I wish to make you forget.  I know how it is with you.  You suffer abominably because you can’t forget.  I haven’t succeeded with you yet.  But wait, only wait, till Jimmy goes, till the summer is over and we can leave the Bosporus.  It’s all too intimate—­the life here.  We are all too near together.  But in Constantinople I know ways.  I’ll stay there all the winter for you.  Even the Christmas holidays—­I’ll give them up for once.  I want to show you that I do care.  For no one else on earth would I give up being with Jimmy in his holidays.  For no one else I’d risk what I’m risking to-night.”

“Jimmy was asleep when you came?”

“Yes, but he might wake.  He never does, but he might wake just to-night.”

“Suppose he did!  Suppose he looked for you in your room and didn’t find you!  Suppose he came up here!”

“He won’t!”

She spoke obstinately, almost as if her assertion of the thing’s impossibility must make it impossible.

“And yet there’s the risk of it,” said Dion—­“the great risk.”

“There are always risks in connection with the big things in life.  We are worth very little if we won’t take them.”

“If it wasn’t for Jimmy would you come and live with me?  Would you drop all this deception?  Would you let your husband divorce you?  Would you give up your place in society for me?  I am an outcast.  Would you come and be an outcast with me?”

“Yes, if it wasn’t for Jimmy.”

“And for Jimmy you’d give me up for ever in a moment, wouldn’t you?”

“Why do you ask these questions?” she said, almost fiercely.

“I want something for myself, something that’s really mine.  Then perhaps——­”

He stopped.

“Perhaps what?”

“Perhaps I could forget—­sometimes.”

“And yet when you knew Jimmy was coming here you wanted to go away.  You were afraid then.  And even to-day—­”

“I want one thing or the other!” he interrupted desperately.  “I’m sick of mixing up good and bad.  I’m sick of prevarications and deceptions.  They go against my whole nature.  I hate struggling in a net.  It saps all my strength.”