“I say, Mr. Leith——”
His voice died away and he stared.
“What’s wrong?” he managed to bring out at last.
He thrust out a hand and laid hold of the grammar. Dion let it go.
His eyes searched the page.
“What’s up, Mr. Leith?”
He looked frankly puzzled and almost afraid. He had never seen any one look just like that before.
There was a moment of silence. Then, with a sudden change of manner, Dion exclaimed:
“Come on, Jimmy! I don’t feel like doing lessons this morning. I vote we go out. I’m going to ask your mother if we can ride to the Belgrad forest. Perhaps she’ll come with us.”
He was suddenly afraid to remain alone with the boy, and he felt that he could not stay in that pavilion full of the atmosphere of feverish passion, of secrecy, of betrayal. Yes, of betrayal! For there he had betrayed the obstinate love, which he had felt at Marathon as a sort of ecstasy, and still felt, but now like a wound, within him in spite of Rosamund’s rejection of him. Not yet had the current taken him and swept him away from all the old landmarks. Perhaps it never would. And yet he had given himself to it, he had not tried to resist.