They had arrived in front of the pavilion backed by trees. Looking in, Dion saw a lighted lamp. The slide of jeweled glass had been removed from it. A white ray fell on an open book laid on a table.
“I was reading here”—he looked—“a thing called ‘The Kasidah.’ Sit down!” He pulled the boy down. “Now what is all this? Your mother must be in the house.”
“But I tell you she isn’t!”
Dion had sat down between Jimmy and the opening on to the terrace. It occurred to him that he ought to have induced the boy to sit with his back to the terrace and his face turned towards the room. It was too late to do that now.
“I tell you she isn’t!” Jimmy repeated, with a sort of almost fierce defiance.
He was staring hard at Dion. His hair was almost wildly disordered, and his face looked pale and angry in the ray of the lamp. Dion felt that there was suspicion in his eyes. Surely those eyes were demanding of him the woman who was hiding among the trees.
“Where have you looked?” he said.
“I tell you I’ve looked everywhere,” said Jimmy, doggedly.
“Did you mother go to bed when you did?”
“No. I went very early. I was so infernally sleepy.”