A door clicked.  There was a faint rustling.  Mrs. Clarke walked into the room.

Dion turned round.

“What’s this photograph doing here?” he asked roughly.

“Doing?”

“Yes.  You hate photographs.  I’ve heard you say so.”

“Jimmy gave it to me on my birthday just before he left for England. 
It’s quite a good one.”

“You are going to keep it here?”

“Yes.  I am going to keep it here.  Come and sit down.”

He did not move.

“Jimmy loathes me,” he said.

“Nonsense.”

“He does.  Through you he has come to loathe me, and you keep his photograph here——­”

“I don’t allow any one to criticize what I do in my own drawing-room,” she interrupted.  “You are really childish to-day.”

His intense irritability had communicated itself to her.  She felt an almost reckless desire to get rid of him.  His look of embittered wretchedness tormented her nerves.  She wondered how it had ever been able to interest her, even to lure her.  She was amazed at her own perversity.

“I cannot allow you to come here if you are going to try to interfere with my arrangements,” she added, with a sort of fierce coldness.

“I have a right to come here.”

“You have not.  You have no rights over me, none at all.  I have made a great many sacrifices for you, far too many, but I shall never sacrifice my complete independence for you or for any one.”

“Sacrifices for me!” he exclaimed.

He snatched up the photograph, held it with both his hands, exerted his strength, smashed the glass, broke the frame, tore the photograph in half, and threw it, the fragments of red wood and the bits of glass on the table.

“You’ve made your boy hate me, and you shan’t have him there,” he said savagely.

“How dare you!” she exclaimed, in a low, hoarse voice.

She flung out her hands.  In snatching at the ruined photograph she picked up with it a fragment of glass.  It cut her hand slightly, and a thin thread of blood ran down over her white skin.

“Oh, your hand!” exclaimed Dion, in a changed voice.  “It’s bleeding!”

He pulled out his handkerchief.

“Leave it alone!  I forbid you to touch it!”

She put the fragments of the photograph inside her dress, gently, tenderly even.  Then she turned and faced him.

“To-morrow I shall telegraph to England for another photograph to be sent out, and it will stand here,” she said, pointing with her bleeding hand at the writing-table.  “It will always stand on my table here and in the Villa Hafiz.”

Then she bound her own handkerchief about her hand and rang the bell.  Sonia came.

“I’ve stupidly cut my hand, Sonia.  Come and tie it up.  Mr. Leith is going in a moment, and then you shall bathe it.”

Sonia looked at Dion, and, without a word, adjusted the handkerchief deftly, and pinned it in place with a safety-pin which she drew out of her dress.  Then she left the room with her flat-footed walk.  As she shut the door Dion said doggedly: