Dion waited by the fountain.

Where would Mrs. Clarke be?  How would she explain matters?  Would she have had time to——?  Oh yes!  She would have had time to be ready with some quite simple, yet quite satisfactory, piece of deception.  Jimmy would find her, and she would convince him of all that it was necessary he should be convinced of.

Dion’s chin sank down and his head almost drooped.  He felt mortally tired as he waited here.  Already a very faint grayness of the coming dawn was beginning to filter in among the darknesses.

Another day to face!  How could he face it?  He had, he supposed, been what is called “true” to the woman who had given herself to him, but how damnably false he had been to himself that night!

Meanwhile Jimmy went upstairs, frowning and very pale.  He went again to his mother’s bedroom and found it empty.  The big bed, turned down, had held no sleeper.  Nothing had been changed in the room since he had been away in the garden.  He did not trouble to look once more in the adjoining sitting-room, but hurried towards the servants’ quarters.  The double doors were shut.  Softly he opened them and passed through into a wooden corridor.  At the far end of it were two rooms sacred to Sonia, the Russian maid.  The first room she slept in; the second was a large airy chamber lined with cupboards.  In this she worked.  She was a very clever needlewoman, expert in the mysteries of dressmaking.

As Jimmy drew near to the door of Sonia’s workroom he heard a low murmur of voices coming from within.  Evidently Sonia was there, talking to some one.  He crept up and listened.

Very tranquil the voices sounded.  They were talking in French.  One was his mother’s, and he heard her say: 

“Another five minutes, Sonia, and perhaps I shall be ready for bed.  At last I’m beginning to feel as if I might be able to sleep.  If only I were like Jimmy!  He doesn’t know anything about the torments of insomnia.”

“Poor Madame!” returned Sonia, in her rather thick, but pleasantly soft, voice.  “Your head a little back.  That’s better!”

Jimmy was aware of an odd, very faint, sound.  He couldn’t make out what it was.

“Mater!” he said.

And he tapped on the door.

“Who’s that?” said Sonia’s voice.

“It’s Jimmy!”

The door was opened by the maid, and he saw his mother in a long, very thin white dressing-gown, seated in an arm-chair before a mirror.  Her colorless hair flowed over the back of the chair, against which her little head was leaning, supported by a silk cushion.  Her face looked very white and tired, and the lids drooped over her usually wide-open eyes, giving her a strange expression of languor, almost of drowsiness.  Sonia held a silver-backed brush in each hand.

“Monsieur Jimmy!” she said.

“Jimmy!” said Mrs. Clarke.  “What’s the matter?”

She lifted her head from the cushion, and sat straight up.  But she still looked languid.