“I think you have an unusual power of making people do what you wish. It is like an emanation,” he said slowly. “And it seems not to be interfered with by distance.”
She leaned till her cheek touched his.
“Dion, I wish to make you forget. I know how it is with you. You suffer abominably because you can’t forget. I haven’t succeeded with you yet. But wait, only wait, till Jimmy goes, till the summer is over and we can leave the Bosporus. It’s all too intimate—the life here. We are all too near together. But in Constantinople I know ways. I’ll stay there all the winter for you. Even the Christmas holidays—I’ll give them up for once. I want to show you that I do care. For no one else on earth would I give up being with Jimmy in his holidays. For no one else I’d risk what I’m risking to-night.”
“Jimmy was asleep when you came?”
“Yes, but he might wake. He never does, but he might wake just to-night.”
“Suppose he did! Suppose he looked for you in your room and didn’t find you! Suppose he came up here!”
“He won’t!”
She spoke obstinately, almost as if her assertion of the thing’s impossibility must make it impossible.
“And yet there’s the risk of it,” said Dion—“the great risk.”
“There are always risks in connection with the big things in life. We are worth very little if we won’t take them.”