d.

The subtlety of Mrs. Clarke, too, helped Dion at first.

Since her son's arrival, without ostentation she had lived for him. She
entered into all Jimmy's plans, was ready to share his excitements and
to taste, with him, those pleasures which were possible to a woman as
well as to a boy. But she was quick to efface herself where she saw
that she was not needed or might even be in the way. As a mother she was
devoid of jealousy, was unselfish without seeming to be so. She did
not parade her virtue. Her reticence was that of a perfectly finished
artist. When she was wanted she was on the spot; when she was not
wanted she disappeared. She sped Dion and Jimmy on their way to boating,
shooting, swimming expeditions, with the happiest grace, and never
assumed the look and manner of the patient woman "left behind."

Not once, since Jimmy's arrival, had she shown to Dion even a trace of
the passionate and perverse woman he now knew her to be under her pale
mask of self-controlled and very mental composure. At the hotel in
Constantinople she had said to Dion, "All the time Jimmy's at Buyukderer
we'll just be friends." Now she seemed utterly to have forgotten that
they had ever been what the world calls lovers, that they had been
involved in scenes of passion, and brutality, and exhaustion, that they
had torn aside the veil of reticence behind which women and men hide
from each other normally the naked truth of what they can be. She
treated Dion casually, though very kindly, as a friend, and never, even
by the swift glance or a lingering touch of her fingers, reminded him of
the fires that burned within her. Even when she was alone with him, when
Jimmy ran off, perhaps, unexpectedly in the wake of a passing caprice,
she never departed from her role of the friend who was before all things
a mother.

So perfect was her hypocrisy, so absolutely natural in its
manifestation, that sometimes, looking at her, Dion could scarcely
forbear from thinking that she had forgotten all about their illicit
connexion; that she had put it behind her forever; that she was one
of those happy people who possess the power of slaying the past and
blotting the murder out of their memories.

That scene between them in Constantinople on the eve of Jimmy's
arrival--had it ever taken place? Had she really ever tried to strike
him on the mouth? Had he caught her wrist in a grip of iron? It seemed
incredible.

And if he was involved in a great hypocr