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It affected her as she had never been affected before. By torturing her imagination it made havoc of her will-power. Her situation rendered her almost desperate, and she could not find an outlet from it. What was she to do? If she went to Buyukderer she felt certain there would be a scandal. Even if there were not, she could not now dare to risk having Jimmy out for his holidays.
August was not far off; Jimmy was coming out to her for his holidays. Suppose, after all, she gave it up? A word from her or merely a silence and that man in the pavilion close by would go away from Buyukderer and would probably never come back. If, for once in her life, she played for safety? The sound of the band on the quay there had been a short interval of silence came up to her again.
Clarke received him in her most casual, most impersonal manner, and made no allusion to the fact that she knew he had already been for two days in Buyukderer without coming near her. She asked him if his room at the hotel was all right, and when he thanked her for bothering about him said that Cyril Vane had seen to it.
Clarke was beginning to think about the villa at Buyukderer. She was getting tired of Pera. She had fulfilled her promise to Dion Leith. She had given up going to England for Jimmy's Christmas holidays and had spent the whole winter in Constantinople. But now she had had enough of it for the present, indeed more than enough of it.
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.
He never received any visitors in these rooms, which he had taken when he gave up going into the society of the diplomats and others, to whom he had been introduced at Buyukderer. His feet echoed on the dirty staircase so he mounted slowly up till he stood in front of his own door. Slowly, like one making an effort that was almost painful to him he searched for his key and drew it out.
He knew very well that she loved him. On the evening of his arrival at Buyukderer for the summer holidays Jimmy had a confidential talk with his mother about "Mr. Leith," whom he had not yet seen, but about whom he had been making many anxious inquiries. "I'll tell you to-night," his mother had replied. And after dinner she fulfilled her promise. "You'll see Mr. Leith to-morrow," she said.
How can I be seen perpetually with a man whom I never introduce to any of my friends, who isn't known at his own Embassy? Both for your own sake and for mine we must be frank about the whole thing." "But I never said I should come to Buyukderer," he said. And there was a sort of dull, lifeless obstinacy in his voice.
You have taken good care of that in the last few months. Why, we've met like thieves in the night." "Here, yes. In a great town one can manage, but not in a place like Buyukderer." He leaned forward and said, with dogged resolution: "One thing is certain I will not be separated from you during the summer. Do whatever you like, but remember that. Make your own plans. I will fall in with them.
Clarke, meanwhile, often went among her friends alone, and when they asked about Jimmy she would say: "Oh, he's gone off somewhere with Mr. Leith. I don't know where. Mr. Leith's a regular boy's man and was a great chum of Jimmy's in London; used to show him how to box and that sort of thing. It's partly for Jimmy that he came to Buyukderer. They read together in the mornings. Mr.
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