A long time later, it might have been a century of passing time, Lord Castleford raised his head and looked down at Yamina’s flushed and happy face.

There was a hint of fire in his eyes and there was also a tenderness in his expression that she had never seen before.

“Now tell me that anything is of importance except us and our love,” he said softly.

“There is – nothing,” she answered, “you are the earth, the sky, the sea! You are my world – there is nothing in it but you!”

He made a little sound of triumph and then he was kissing her again with slow deliberate kisses which took her soul into his keeping –

*

She argued with him again during the evening, but it was half-hearted.

Lord Castleford was calm and determined with the air of a man who has made a monumental decision and no longer allows even the smallest detail of it to concern him.

He merely reiterated that when they arrived in Athens he would call on the King as would be expected, then he would write immediately to London, sending his resignation to Lord Palmerston and saying that he would merely wait in Athens until another Minister could be sent to replace him.

“I owe the Foreign Office good manners, if nothing else,” he said to Yamina, “but that need not deter us from making arrangements for our marriage to take place immediately.”

“We belong to different – religions,” she said faintly.

Lord Castleford shrugged his shoulders.

“We are both Christians, but it would not matter to me whether you were a Moslem or a Hottentot! All I am concerned with is that the Marriage Service should be binding and that for you there is no escape.”

“Do you imagine that I should – ever wish to leave you?” she asked in a low voice.

“I think I would kill you rather than lose you to another man!”

She gave a little laugh.

“If there are any other men in the world – I am unable to see them! You fill my eyes and you know as well as I do no man could be more handsome or attractive!”

“Are you flattering me?” Lord Castleford teased. “It is something you have never done before, Yamina!”

“There has never actually been an opportunity. Have you counted the hours of how long we have known each other?”

“I knew you first in the Garden of Eden,” Lord Castleford said, “and I met you again when I travelled across the world in the train of Marco Polo. Perhaps we were part of the hordes that rallied behind Genghis Khan or maybe we lived in Crete in the golden age of King Minos.”

Yamina clasped her hands together.

“How I wish Papa could hear you,” she said. “Those are the civilisations that meant so much more to him than his own and it was the history of those times that I used to read aloud to him.”

Lord Castleford smiled.