There was a very long silence between them.  During it he remained motionless.  With his hanging hands and his drooping head he looked, she thought, almost as much like a puppet as like a man.  His whole body had a strange aspect of listlessness, almost of feebleness.  Yet she knew how muscular and powerful he still was, although he had long ago ceased from taking care of his body.  The silence lasted so long, and he stood so absolutely still, that she began to feel uneasy, even faintly afraid.  The nerves in her body were tingling.  They could have braced themselves to encounter violence, but this immobility and dumbness tormented them.  She wanted to speak, to move, but she felt obliged to wait for him.  At last he looked up.  He came to her, lifted his hands and laid them heavily on her emaciated shoulders.

“So that’s what you are!”

He stared into her haggard face.  She met his eyes resolutely.

“That’s what you are!”

“Yes.”

“Why have you told me this to-day?”

“Of course you knew it long ago.”

“Answer me.  Why have you told me to-day?”

“I don’t know.”

“I do.  You have told me to-day because you have had enough of me.  You meant to use Jimmy to get rid of me as you once used him to get to know me more intimately.  When you found that wouldn’t serve your turn, you made up your mind to speak a word or two of truth.  You thought you would disgust me into leaving you.”

“Of course you knew it long ago,” she repeated in a dull voice.

“I didn’t know it.  I might have suspected it.  In fact, once I did, and I told you so.  But you drove out my suspicion.  I don’t know exactly how.  And since then—­after you got your verdict in London I saw Dumeny smile at you as he went out of the Court.  I have never been able to forget that smile.  Now I understand it.  One by one you’ve managed to get rid of them all.  And now at last you’ve arrived at me, and you’ve said to yourself, ‘It’s his turn to be kicked out now.’  Haven’t you?”

“Nothing can last forever,” she murmured huskily.

“No.  But this time you’re not going to scrawl ‘finis’ exactly when you want to.”

“It’s getting dark, and I’m tired.  My hand is hurting me.”

He gripped her shoulders more firmly.

“If you meant some day to get rid of me, to kick me out as you’ve kicked out the others,” he said grimly, “you shouldn’t have made me come to you that night when Jimmy was at Buyukderer.  That was a mistake on your part.”

“Why?” she asked, almost in a whisper.

“Because that night through you I lost something; I lost the last shred of my self-respect.  Till that night I was still clinging on to it.  You struck my hands away and made me let go.  Now I don’t care.  And that’s why I’m not going to let you make the sign of the cross over me and dismiss me into hell.  Your list closes with me, Cynthia.  I’m not going to give you up.”