“Right you are!” said the boy, still gruffly.

He waited on the terrace while Dion went into the pavilion.  As Dion took up “The Kasidah” he glanced down at the page at which Mrs. Clarke had chanced to set the book open, and read: 

“Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from
None but self expect applause——­”

With a feeling of cold and abject soul-nausea he shut the book, put it away on a bookshelf in which he saw a gap, and went to turn out the lamp.  As the flame flickered and died out he heard Jimmy’s foot shift on the terrace.

“Do what thy manhood bids thee do——­”

Dion stood for a moment in the dark.  He was in a darkness greater than any which reigned in the pavilion.  His soul seemed to him to be pressing against it, to be hemmed in by it as by towering walls of iron.  For an instant he shut his eyes.  And when he did that he saw, low down, a little boy’s figure, two small outstretched hands groping.

Robin!

“Aren’t you coming, Mr. Leith?  What’s the matter?”

“I was just seeing that the lamp was thoroughly out.”

“Well——­”

Dion came out.

“We’ll look all over the garden.  But if your mother had been in it she must have heard you calling her.  I did, although I was inside there reading.”

“I know.  I thought of that too,” returned Jimmy.

And Dion fancied that the boy’s voice was very cold; Dion fancied this but he was not sure.  His conscience might be tricking him.  He hoped that it was tricking him.

“We’d better look among the trees,” he said.  “And then we’ll go to the terrace below.”

“It’s no use looking among the trees,” Jimmy returned.  “If she was up here she must have heard us talking all this time.”

Abruptly he led the way to the steps near the plane tree.  Dion followed him slowly.  Was it possible that Jimmy had guessed?  Was it possible that Jimmy had caught a glimpse of his mother escaping?  The boy’s manner was surely almost hostile.

They searched the garden in silence, and at length found themselves by the fountain close to the French window of the drawing-room.

“You mother must be in the house,” said Dion firmly.

“But I know she isn’t!” Jimmy retorted, with a sort of dull fixed obstinacy.

“Did you rouse the servants?”

“No.”

“Where do they sleep?”

“Away from us, by themselves.”

“You’d better go and look again.  If you can’t find your mother perhaps you’d better wake the servants.”

“I know,” said Jimmy, in a voice that had suddenly changed, become brighter, more eager—­“I’ll go to Sonia.”

“Your mother’s maid?  That’s it.  She may know something.  I’ll wait down here at the window.  Got a candle?”

“Yes.  I left it in there by the piano.”

He felt his way in and, almost immediately, struck a light.  The candle flickered across his face and his disordered hair as he disappeared.