“We are just off.”

“Are we?”

“Take your seats, please!” shouted a loud bass voice.

There was a sound of the banging of doors.

Rosamund leaned out of the window.

“Good-by, Father!”

The train began to move.

“Good-by. Cor meum vigilat.”

Rosamund pulled down her veil quickly over her face.

She was weary of rebellion.  Yet she knew that deep down within her dwelt one who was still a rebel.  She was starting on a great journey but she could not foresee what would happen at its end.  For she no longer knew what she was capable of doing, and what would be too great a task for her poor powers.  She was trying; she would try; that was all she knew.

As the train pushed on through the fading light she said to herself again and again: 

“La divina volontate!  La divina volontate!”

CHAPTER XIII

A week had passed, and the Villa Hafiz had not yet opened its door to receive its mistress.  The servants, with the exception of Sonia, had arrived.  The Greek butler had everything in order downstairs.  Above stairs the big, low bed was made, and there were flowers in the vases dotted about here and there in the blue-and-green sitting-room.  Osman, the gardener, had trimmed the rose-bushes, had carefully cleaned the garden seats, and had swept straying leaves from the winding paths.  The fountain sang its under-song above the lilies.  On the highest terrace, beyond the climbing garden, the pavilion waited for the woman and man who had hidden themselves in it to go down into the darkness.  But no one slept in the big, low bed, or sat in the blue-and-green room; the garden was deserted; by night no feet trod softly to the pavilion.

For the first time in her life Cynthia Clarke was in the toils.  She who loved her personal freedom almost wildly no longer felt free.  She dared not go to Buyukderer.

She looked back to that night when she had told Dion Leith the truth, and it stood out among all the nights of her life, more black and fatal than any of them, because on it she had been false to herself, had been weak.  She had not followed up her strength in words by strength in action!  She had allowed Dion Leith to dominate her that night, to make of her against her will his creature.  In doing that she had taken a step down—­a step away from the path in which hitherto she had always walked.  And that departure from inflexible selfishness seemed strangely to have weakened her will.

She was afraid of Dion because she felt that he was ungovernable by her, that her will no longer meant anything to him.  He did not brace himself to defy it; simply, he did not bother about it.  He seemed to have passed into a region where such a trifle as a woman’s will faded away from his perception.

His serpent had swallowed up hers.