“So we have something else in common, my precious.”

When it grew late and it was time to go to bed, Yamina looked at Lord Castleford and he saw the question in her eyes.

“I love you!” he said. “And I worship you for your purity and because you are enshrined in my heart.”

He kissed the palms of both her hands and then he said,

“I want you! God knows, I want you! My body aches for you, but I will not make you mine until the ring is on your finger, until you are my wife, when no man or creed or Priest or law may ever put us apart again.”

Yamina put her arms round his neck and drew his head down to hers.

“I am ready to do – anything you – want of me,” she whispered.

“And that, my darling, is why I must protect you against myself,” Lord Castleford said, “just as I will protect you for the rest of your life against anything that could harm or distress you. Against not only danger but also unhappiness and, most of all, any regrets.”

He kissed her until she was throbbing and pulsating with the fire he always awakened in her.

Then he set her away from him, kissed her forehead and said in a voice that was very deep,

“Go to bed, my beautiful darling. There is a great deal for us to do tomorrow.”

He left her alone in the cabin.

Yamina heard him come back very much later.

She was awake, but she did not speak to him and, after he had undressed, Lord Castleford lay down on the cushions that Jenkins had prepared for him.

She knew from the way he turned and twisted from time to time that he was awake as she was, but they did not speak to each other.

It was as if they had dedicated themselves to a certain course and an iron discipline prevented them from breaking it.

In the morning Lord Castleford rose early and went up on deck to see the ship steam into Piraeus, the port of Athens.

Only when they were actually coming alongside the quay did he return to the cabin to find Yamina was ready to climb back into the painted trunk.

He looked at her for a moment in her crimson entari with the glittering girdle of precious stones and the brooch from her talpock pinning her chemise tightly at her neck and he smiled.

“If they saw you walking in the streets of Athens you would cause a riot!” he said. “Cover yourself with your veil, my darling. There is a great deal to be said for the woman one loves being kept in purdah!” Yamina laughed and lifted her face to his.