Government came upon her. She felt, as often before, a great hand catch her in a grip of iron. She ceased to resist.
Still holding the watch, she went to the opening in the pavilion.
The hanging lamp had gone out. For a moment she could only see darkness in the interior. It looked empty. There was no sound within. Could the man she had been thinking about, debating about, have slipped away while she was sitting under the plane tree? She had been thinking so deeply that she had not heard the noise of the band on the quay; she might not have heard his footsteps. While she had been considering whether she should leave him perhaps he had fled from her.
This flashing thought brought her back at once to her true and irrevocable self, and she was filled instantly with fierce determination and a cold intense anger. Jimmy was forgotten. He was dead to her at that moment. She leaned forward, peering into the darkness.
“Dion!” she said. “Dion!”
There was no answer, but she saw something stir within, something low down. He was there—or something was there, something alive. She went into the pavilion, and knelt down by it.
“Dion!” she said.
He raised himself on the divan, and turned on his side.
“Why are you kneeling down?” he said. “Don’t kneel. I hate to see a woman kneeling, and I know you never pray. Get up.”
He spoke in a voice that was new to her. It seemed to her hot and hard. She obeyed him at once and got up from her knees.