Suddenly he thrust his hand into his jacket and pulled out the letters he had brought from the British Post Office.

"And apart from that, you made a mistake in reckoning on my sensitiveness."

"Honestly, I don't know what you mean by that," she said, with frigid calm.

"Yes, you do. You thought I wouldn't follow you to England because I should shrink from facing my mother, perhaps, and my wife's relatives, and all the people who know what I've done. I don't shrink from meeting any one, and I'll prove it to you."

He pulled a letter out of its envelope.

"This is from Beatrice Daventry. In it she tells me a piece of news." (He glanced quickly over the sheets.) "My wife has got tired of leading a religious life and has left the Sisterhood in which she was, and gone to live in London. Here it is: 'Rosamund is living once more in Great Cumberland Place with my guardian. She never goes into society, but otherwise she is leading an ordinary life. I am quite sure she will never go back to Liverpool.'—So if I go to London I may run across my wife any day. Why not?"

"You wife has left the Sisterhood!" said Mrs. Clarke slowly, forcing a sound of surprise into her husky voice.

"I've just told you so. You and I may meet her in London. If we do, I should think she'll be hard put to it to recognize me. Now put on your things and we'll be off."

"I shall not go out to-night. I intend——"

She paused.

"What do you intend?"

"I don't mean ever to go to those rooms again."

"Indeed. Why not?" he asked, with cold irony.

"I loathe them."

"You found them. You chose the furniture for them. Your perfect taste made them what they are."

"I tell you I loathe them!" she repeated violently.

"We'll change them, then. We can easily find some others that will do just as well."

"Don't you understand that I loathe them because I meet you in them?"

"I understood that a good while ago."

"And yet you—"

"My dear!" he interrupted her. "Didn't I tell you you had destroyed me? The man I was might have bothered about trifles of that kind, the man I am simply doesn't recognize them. Jimmy hates me too, but I haven't done with Jimmy yet, nevertheless."

"You shall never meet Jimmy again. I shall prevent it."

"How can you?"

"You're not fit to be with him."

"But you have molded me into what I am. He must get accustomed to his own mother's handiwork."

"Jimmy can't bear you. He told me so when he was last here. He detests you."

"Ah!" said Dion, with sudden savagery, springing up from his chair. "So you and he have talked me over! I was sure of it. And no doubt you told Jimmy he was right in hating me."

"I never discussed the matter with him at all. I couldn't prevent his telling me what he felt about you."

Dion had become very pale. He stood for a moment without speaking, clenching his hands and looking at her with blazing eyes. For a moment she thought that perhaps he was going to strike her. He seemed to be struggling desperately with himself, to be striving to conquer something within him. At last he turned away from her. She heard him twice mutter the name of her boy, "Jimmy! Jimmy!" Then he went away from her to the far end of the room, where the piano was, and stood by it. She saw his broad shoulders heaving. He held on to the edge of the piano with both hands, leaning forward. She stayed where she was, staring at him. She realized that to-night he might be dangerous to her. She had set out to defy him. But she was not sure now whether, perhaps, gentleness and an air of great sincerity might not be the only effective weapons against him in his present abnormal condition. Possibly even now it was not too late to use them. She crossed the room and came to him swiftly.

"Dion!" she said.

He did not move.

"Dion!" she repeated, putting her hand on his shoulder.

He turned round. His pale face was distorted. She scarcely recognized him.

"Dion, let us look things in the face."

"Oh, God—that is what I'm doing," he said.

His lips twisted, his face was convulsed. She looked at him in silence, wondering what was going to happen. For a moment she was almost physically afraid. Something in him to-night struck hard upon her imagination and she felt as if it were trembling.

"Come and sit down," he said, at last.

And she saw that for the moment he had succeeded in regaining self-control.

"Very well."

She went to sit down; he sat opposite her.

"You hate me, don't you?" he said.

She hesitated.

"Don't you?" he repeated.

"We needn't use ugly words," she said at last.

"For ugly things? I believe it's best. You hate me and I hate you. D'you know why I hate you? Not because you deliberately made me care for you with my body, in the beastly, wholly physical way, but because you wouldn't let the other thing alone."

"The other thing?"

"Haven't we got something else as well as the body? Look here—before I ever knew you I was always trying to build. At first I tried to build for a possible future which might never come. Well, it did come, and I was glad I'd stuck to my building—sometimes when it was difficult. Then I tried to build for—for my wife—and then my child came and I tried to build for him, too. So it went on. I was always building, or trying to. In South Africa I was doing it, and I came back feeling as if I'd got something to show, not much, but something, for my work. Then the crash came, and I thought I knew sorrow and horror down to the bones. But I didn't. I've only got to know them to the bones here. You've made me know them. If you'd loved me I should never have complained, have attacked you, been brutal to you; but when I think that you've never cared a rap about me, never cared for anything but my body, and that—that——" his voice broke for a moment; then he recovered himself and went on, more harshly,—"and that merely from desire, or whatever you choose to call it, you've sent the last stones of my building to dust, I sometimes feel as if I could murder you. If you meant to kick me out and be free of me when you had had enough of me, you should never have brought Jimmy into the matter; for in a way you could never understand Jimmy was linked up with my boy, with Robin. When you made me earn Jimmy's hatred by being utterly false to all I really was, you separated me from my boy. I killed him, but till then I was sometimes near him. Ever since that night of lying and dirty pretense he's—he's—I've lost him. You've taken my boy from me. Why should I leave you yours?"

"But you're mad—when my boy's alive and—"

"And so's mine!"

She stared at him in silence.

"You can't give him back to me. Jimmy shrinks from me not because of what I've done, but because of what I've become, and my boy feels as Jimmy does. He—he——"

Mrs. Clarke pushed back her chair bruskly. She was now feeling really afraid. She longed to call in Sonia. She wished the other servants were in the flat instead of at Buyukderer.

"You boy's dead," she said, dully, obstinately. "Jimmy has nothing to do with him—never had anything to do with him. And as for me, I have never interfered between you and your child."

She got up. So did he.

"Never, never!" she repeated. "But your mind is warped and you don't know what you're saying."

"I do. But we won't argue about it. You're a materialist and you can't understand the real things."

His own words seemed suddenly to strike upon him like a great blow.

"The real things!" he exclaimed. "I've lost them all for ever. But I'll keep what I've got. I'll keep what I've got. You hate me and I hate you, but we belong to each other and we'll stick together, and Jimmy must make up his mind to it. Once you said that if he was twenty-one you'd tell him all about it. If you're going to England I'll go there too, and we can enlighten Jimmy a little sooner. Now let us be off to the rooms. As you've taken a dislike to them we'll give them up. But we must pay a last visit to them, a visit of good-bye."

She shuddered. The thought of being shut up alone with him horrified her imagination. She waited a moment; then she said:

"Very well. I'll go and put on my things."

And she went out of the room. She wanted to gain time, to be alone for a moment.

When she was in her bedroom she did not summon Sonia, who was in the kitchen washing up. Slowly she went to get out a wrap and a hat. Standing before the glass she adjusted the hat on her head carefully, adroitly; then she drew the wrap around her shoulders and picked up a pair of long gloves. After an instant of hesitation she began to pull them on. The process took several minutes. She was careful to smooth out every wrinkle. While she did so she was thinking of Rosamund Leith.

All through the evening she had been on the verge of telling Dion that his wife was in Constantinople, but something had held her back. And even now she could not make up her mind whether to tell him or not. She was afraid to risk the revelation because she did not know at all how he would take it. When he knew she might be free. There was the possibility of that. He must realize, he would surely be obliged to realize, that his wife could have but one purpose in deliberately traveling out to the place where he was living. She must be seeking a reconciliation, in spite of the knowledge which Mrs. Clarke had read in her eyes that day. But would Dion face those eyes with the hard defiance of one irreparably aloof from his former life? If he were really ready and determined to show himself in London as the lover of another woman would he not be ready to do the same thing here in Constantinople?

To tell him seemed to Mrs. Clarke the one chance of escape for her now, but she was afraid to tell him because she was afraid to know that what seemed the only possible avenue to freedom was barred against her. She had said to herself at the piano "Vouloir c'est pouvoir," and she had determined to be free, but again Dion's will of a desperate man had towered up over hers. It was the fact that he was desperate which gave to him this power.

At last the gloves lay absolutely smooth on her hands and arms, and she went back to the drawing-room. Till she opened the door of it she did not know what she was going to do.

"So you're dressed!" Dion said as she came in. "That's right. Let's be off."

"What is the good of going? You have said we hate each other. How can this sort of thing go on in hatred? Dion, let us give it all up."

"Why have you put on your things?"

"I don't know. Let us say good-by to-night, and not in anger. We were not suited to be together for long. We are too different."

"How many men have you said all this to already? Come along!"

He took her firmly by the wrist.

"Wait, Dion!"

"Why should we wait?"

"There's something I must tell you before we go."

He kept his hand on her wrist.

"Well? What is it?"

"I went to Santa Sophia to-day."

As she spoke the Bedouin came before her again. She saw his bronze-colored arms and his bird-like eyes.

"Santa Sophia! Did you go to pray?"

She stared at him. His lips were curled in a smile.

"No," she said. "But I like to go there sometimes. As I was coming away I met some one."

"Well?"

"Some one you know—a woman."

"A woman? Lady Ingleton?"

"No; your wife."

The fingers which held her wrist became suddenly cold, but they still pressed firmly upon her flesh.

"That's a lie!" he said hoarsely.

"It isn't!"

"How dare you tell me such a lie?"

He bent and gazed into her eyes.

"Liar! Liar!"

But though his lips made the assertion, his eyes, in agony, seemed to be asking a question. He seized her other wrist.

"What's your object in telling me such a lie? What are you trying to gain by it? Do you think you'll get rid of me for to-night, and that to-morrow, by some trick, you'll escape from me forever? D'you think that?"

"I met your wife to-day just outside Santa Sophia," she said steadily. "When she saw me she stopped. We looked at each other for a minute. Neither of us spoke a word. But she told me something."

"Told you . . . ?"

"With her eyes. She knows about you and me."

His hands fell from her wrists. By the look in his eyes she saw that he was beginning to believe her.

"She knows," Mrs. Clarke repeated. "And yet she had come here. What does that mean?"

"What does that mean?" he repeated, in a muttering voice.

"Do you believe what I say?"

"Yes; she is here."

A fierce wave of red went over his face. For a moment his eyes shone. Then a look of despair and horror made him frightful, and stirred even in her a sensation of pity.

He began to tremble.

"Don't! Don't!" she said, putting out her hands and moving away.

"She can't know!" he said, trembling more violently.

"She does know."

"She wouldn't have come. She doesn't know. She doesn't know."

"She does know. Now I'm ready, if you want to go to the rooms."

Dion went white to the lips. He came towards her. His eyes were so menacing that she felt sure he was going to do her some dreadful injury; but when he was close to her he controlled himself and stood still. For what seemed to her a very long time he stood there, looking at her as a man looks at the heap of his sins when the sword has cloven a way into the depths of his spirit. Then he said:

"You're free."

He went out of the room, leaving the door open. A moment later Mrs. Clarke heard the front door shut, and his footsteps on the stone stairs outside. They died away.

Then she began to sob. She felt shaken and frightened almost like a child. But presently her sobs ceased. She took off her hat and wrap and her gloves, lay down on the sofa, put her hands behind her small head, and, motionless, gazed at the pale gray wall of the room. It seemed to fade away after she had gazed at it for two or three minutes; a world opened out before her, and she saw a barrier, like a long deep trench, stretching into a far distance. On one side of this trench stood a boy with densely thick hair and large hands and frank, observant eyes; on the other stood a Bedouin of the desert.

Then she shuddered. Dion had told her she was free. But was she free? Could she ever be free now?

Suddenly she broke into a passion of tears. She was inundated with self-pity. She had prayed to the Unknown God. He had answered her prayer, but nevertheless, he had surely cursed her. For love and lust were at merciless war within her. She was tormented.

That night she knew she had run up a debt which she would be forced to pay; she knew that her punishment was beginning.



CHAPTER XV

When Dion came out into the street he stood still on the pavement. It was between ten and eleven o'clock. Stamboul, the mysterious city, was plunged in darkness, but Pera was lit and astir, was full of blatant and furtive activities. He listened to its voices as he stood under the stars, and presently from them the voice of a woman detached itself, and said clearly and with a sort of beautifully wondering slowness, "I can see the Pleiades."

Tears started into his eyes. He was afraid of that voice and yet his whole being longed desperately to hear it again. The knowledge that Rosamund was here in Constantinople, very near to him—how it had changed the whole city for him! Every light that gleamed, every sound that rose up, seemed to hold for him a terrible vital meaning. And he knew that all the time he had been living in Constantinople it had been to him a horrible city of roaring emptiness, and he knew that now, in a moment, it had become the true center of the world. He was amazed and he was horrified by the power and intensity of the love within him. In this moment he knew it for an undying thing. Nothing could kill it, no act of Rosamund's, no act of his. Even lust had not suffocated the purity of it, even satiety of the flesh had not lessened the yearning of it, or availed to deprive it of its ardent simplicity, of its ideal character. In it there was still the child with his wonder, the boy with his stirring aspirations towards life, the man with his full-grown passion. He had sought to kill it and he had not even touched it. He knew that now and was shaken by the knowledge. Where did it dwell then, this thing that governed him and that he could not break? He longed to get at it, to seize it, hold it to some fierce light, examine it. And then? Would he wish to cast it away?

"I can see the Pleiades."

For a moment the peace of Olympia was about him, and he heard the voices of Eternity whispering among the pine trees. Then the irreparable blotted out that green beauty, that message from the beyond; reality rushed upon him. He turned and looked at the building he had just left. It towered above him, white, bare, with its rows of windows. He knew that he would never go into it again, that he had done forever with the woman in there who hated him. Yes, he had done with her insomuch as a man can finish with any one who has been closely, intimately, for good or for evil, in his life. As he watched her windows for a moment his mind reviewed swiftly his connection with her, from the moment when she had held his hand indifferently, yet with intention, in Mrs. Chetwinde's drawing-room, till the moment, just past, when he had said to her, "You are free." And he knew that from the first moment when she had seen him she had made up her mind that some day he should be her lover. He hated her, and yet he knew now that in some strange and obscure way he almost respected her, for her determination, her unscrupulous courage, her will to live as she chose to live. She at any rate possessed a kind of evil strength. And he——?

Slowly he turned away from that house. He did not know where Rosamund was staying, but he thought she was probably at the Hotel de Byzance, and he walked almost mechanically towards it. He was burning with excitement, and yet there was within him something cold, capable and relentless, which considered him almost as a judge considers a criminal, which seemed to be probing into the rotten part of his nature, determined to know once and for all just how rotten it was. Rosamund surely was strong in her goodness as Mrs. Clarke was strong in her evil. He had known the cruelty of both those strengths. And why? Surely because he himself had never been really strong. Intensity of feeling had constantly betrayed him into weakness. And even now was it not weakness in him, this inability to leave off loving Rosamund after all that had happened? Perhaps the power of feeling intensely was the great betrayer of a man.

He descended the Grande Rue, moving in the midst of a press of humanity, but strongly conscious only of Rosamund's nearness to him, until at last he was in front of the Hotel de Byzance. He stood on the opposite side of the way, looking at the lighted windows, at the doorway through which people came and went. Was she in there, close to him? Why had she come to Constantinople?

She must have come there because of him. There could not surely be any other reason for her traveling so far to the city where she knew he was living. But then she must have repented of her cruelty after the death of Robin, have thought seriously of resuming her married life. It must be so. Inexorably Dion's reason led him to that conclusion. Having reached it he looked at himself, and again his own weakness confronted him like a specter which would not leave him, which dogged him relentlessly down all the ways of his life. Prompted, governed by that weakness, which he had actually mistaken madly for strength, for an assertion of his manhood, he had raised up between Rosamund and himself perhaps the only barrier which could never be broken down, the barrier of a great betrayal. What she had most cared for in him he had trampled into the dirt; he had slain the purity which had drawn her to him.

Mrs. Clarke had said that Rosamund knew of their connexion. He believed her. He could not help trusting her horrible capacity to read such a truth in another woman's eyes. It must be so. Rosamund surely could only have learned in Constantinople the horrible truth which would forever divide them. She must have traveled out with the intention of seeing him again, of telling him that she repented of what she had done, and then in the city which had seen his degradation she must have found out what he was.

He saw her outraged, bitterly ashamed of having made the long journey to seek a man who had betrayed her; he saw her wounded in the soul. She had wounded him in the soul, but at this moment he scarcely thought of that. The knowledge that she was near to him seemed to have suddenly renewed the pure springs of his youth. When Cynthia Clarke had said, "Now I'm ready if you want to go to the rooms," she had received her freedom from the Dion who had won Rosamund, not from the withered and embittered man upon whom she had perversely seized in his misery and desolation.

That Rosamund should travel to him and then know him for what he was! All his intense bitterness against her was swept away by the flood of his hatred of himself.

Suddenly the lights of the city seemed to fade before his eyes and the voices of the city seemed to lose their chattering gaiety. Darkness and horrible mutterings were about him. He heard the last door closing against him. He accounted himself from henceforth among the damned. Lifting his head he stared for a moment at the Hotel de Byzance. Now he felt sure that she was there. He knew that she was there, and he bade her an eternal farewell. Not she—as for so long he had thought—but he had broken their marriage. She had sinned in the soul. But to-night he did not see her sin. He saw only his black sin of the body, the irreparable sin he had committed against her shining purity to which he had been united.

How could he have committed that sin?

He turned away from the hotel, and went down towards his lodgings in Galata; he felt as he walked, like one treading a descent which led down into eternal darkness.

How had he come to do what he had done?

Already he saw Cynthia Clarke as something far away, an almost meaningless phantom. He wondered why he had felt power in her; he wondered what it was that had led him to her, had kept him beside her, had bound him to her. She was nothing. She had never really been anything to him. And yet she had ruined his life. He saw her pale and haggard face, her haunted cheeks and temples, the lovely shape of her head with its cloud of unshining hair, her small tenacious hands. He saw her distinctly. But she was far away, utterly remote from him. She had meant nothing to him, and yet she had ruined him. Let her go. Her work was done.

It was near midnight when he went at last to his lodgings, which were in a high house not far from the Tophane landing. From his windows he could see the Golden Horn, and the minarets and domes of Stamboul. His two rooms, though clean, were shabbily furnished and unattractive. He had a Greek servant who came in every day to do what was necessary. He never received any visitors in these rooms, which he had taken when he gave up going into the society of the diplomats and others, to whom he had been introduced at Buyukderer.

His feet echoed on the dirty staircase so he mounted slowly up till he stood in front of his own door. Slowly, like one making an effort that was almost painful to him he searched for his key and drew it out. His hand shook as he inserted the key into the keyhole. He tried to steady his hand, but he could not control its furtive and perpetual movement. When the door was open he struck a match, and lit a candle that stood on a chair in the dingy and narrow lobby. Then he turned round wearily to shut the door. He was possessed by a great fatigue, and wondered whether, if he fell on his bed in the blackness, he would be able to sleep. As he turned, he saw, lying on the matting at his feet, a square white envelope. It was lying upside down. Some one must have pushed it under the door while he was out.

He stood looking at it for a minute. Then he shut the door, bent down, picked up the envelope, turned it over and held it near the candle flame. He read his name and the handwriting was Rosamund's.

After a long pause he took the candle and carried the letter into his sitting-room. He set the candle down on the table on which lay "The Kasidah" and a few other books, laid the letter beside it, with trembling hands drew up a chair and sat down.

Rosamund had written to him. When? Before she had learnt the truth or afterwards?

For a long time he sat there, leaning over the table, staring at the address which her hand had written. And he saw her hand, so different from Mrs. Clarke's, and he remembered its touch upon his, absolutely unlike the touch of any other hand ever felt by him. Something quivered in his flesh. The agony of the body rushed upon him and mingled with the agony of the soul. He bent down, laid his hot forehead against the letter, and shut his eyes.

A clock struck presently. He opened his eyes, lifted his head, took up the envelope, quickly tore it, and unfolded the paper within.

"HOTEL DE BYZANCE, CONSTANTINOPLE, Wednesday evening

"I am here. I want to see you. Shall I come to you to-morrow? I can come at any time, or I can meet you at any place you choose. Only tell me the hour and how to go if it is difficult.

"ROSAMUND."

Wednesday evening! It was now the night of Wednesday. Then Rosamund had written to him after she had been to Santa Sophia and had met Mrs. Clarke. She knew, and yet she wrote to him; she asked to see him; she even offered to come to his rooms. The thing was incomprehensible.

He read the note again. He pored over every word in it almost like a child. Then he held it in his hand, sat back in his chair and wondered.

What did Rosamund mean? Why did she wish to see him? What could she intend to do? His intimate knowledge of what Rosamund was companioned him at this moment—that knowledge which no separation, which no hatred even, could ever destroy. She was fastidiously pure. She could never be anything else. He could not conceive of her ever drawing near to, and associating herself deliberately with, bodily degradation. He thought of her as he had known her, with her relations, her friends, with himself, with Robin. Always in every relation of life a radiant purity had been about her like an atmosphere; always she had walked in rays of the sun. Until Robin had died! And then she had withdrawn into the austere purity of the religious life. He felt it to be absolutely impossible that she should seek him, even seek but one interview with him, if she knew what his life had been during the last few months. And, feeling that, he was now forced to the conclusion that Mrs. Clarke's intuition had gone for once astray. If Rosamund knew she would never have written that note. Again he looked at it, read it. It must have been written in complete ignorance. Mrs. Clarke had made a mistake. Perhaps she had been betrayed into error by her own knowledge of guilt. And yet such a lapse was very uncharacteristic of her. He compared his knowledge of her with his knowledge of Rosamund. It was absolutely impossible that Rosamund had written that letter to him with full understanding of his situation in Constantinople. But she might have heard rumors. She might have resolved to clear them up. Having traveled out with the intention of seeking a reconciliation she might have thought it due to him to accept evil tidings of him only from his own lips. Always, he knew, she had absolutely trusted in his loyalty and faithfulness to her. Perhaps then, even though she had put him out of her life, she was unable to believe that he had tried to forget her in unfaithfulness. Perhaps that was the true explanation of her conduct.

Could he then save himself from destruction by a great lie?

He sat pondering that problem, oblivious of time. Could he lie to Rosamund? All his long bitterness against her for the moment was gone, driven out by his self-condemnation. A great love must forgive. It cannot help itself. It carries within it, as a child is carried in the womb, the sweet burden of divinity, and shares in the attributes of God. So it was with Dion on that night as he sat in his dingy room. And presently his soul rejected the lie he had abominably thought of. He knew he could not tell Rosamund a life. Then what was he to do?

He drew out of a drawer a piece of letter paper, dipped a pen in ink. He had a mind to write the horrible truth which he could surely never speak.

"I have received your letter," he wrote, in a blurred and unsteady handwriting. Then he stopped. He stared at the paper, pushed it away from him, and got up. He could not write the truth. He went to the window and looked out into the dark night. Here and there he saw faint lights. But Stamboul was almost hidden in the gloom, a city rather suggested by its shadow than actually visible. The Golden Horn was a tangled mystery. There were some withdrawn stars.

Should he not reply to Rosamund's letter? If she had heard rumors about his life would not his silence convey to her the fact that they were true? He had perhaps only to do nothing and Rosamund would understand and—would leave Constantinople.

The blackness which shrouded Stamboul suddenly seemed to him to become more solid, impregnable. He felt that his own life would be drowned in blackness if Rosamund went away. And abruptly he knew that he must see her. Whatever the cost, whatever the shame and bitterness, he must see her at once. He would tell her, or try to tell her, what he had been through, what he had suffered, why he had done what he had done. Possibly she would be able to understand. If only he could find the words that would give her the inner truth perhaps they might reach her heart. Something intense told him that he must try to make her understand how he had loved her, through all his hideous attempts to slay his love of her. Could a woman understand such a thing? Desperately he wondered. Might not his terrible sincerity perhaps overwhelm her doubts?

He left the window, sat down again at the table, and wrote quickly.

"I have your letter. Will you meet me to-morrow at Eyub, in the cemetery on the hill? I will be near the Tekkeh of the dancing Dervishes. I will be there before noon, and will wait all day.

"DION"

When he began to write he knew that he could not make his confession to Rosamund within the four walls of his sordid and dingy room. Her power to understand would surely be taken from her there. Might it not be released under the sky of morning, within sight of those minarets which he had sometimes feared, but which he had always secretly, in some obscure way, loved even in the most abominable moments of his abominable life, as he had always secretly, beneath all the hard bitterness of his stricken heart, loved Rosamund? From them came the voice which would not be gainsaid, the voice which whispered, "In the East thou shalt find me if thou hast not found me in the West." Might not that voice help him when he spoke to Rosamund, help her to understand him, help her perhaps even to——

But there he stopped. He dared not contemplate the possibility of her being able to accept the man he had become as her companion. And yet now he felt himself somehow closely akin to the former Dion, flesh of that man's flesh, bone of his bone. It was as if his sin fell from him when he so utterly repented of it.

Slowly he put the note he had written into an envelope, sealed it and wrote the address—"Mrs. Dion Leith, Hotel de Byzance." He blotted it. Then he fetched his hat and stick. He meant to take the note himself to the Hotel de Byzance. The night might be made for sleep, but he knew he could not sleep till he had seen Rosamund. When he was out in the air, and was walking uphill towards Pera, he realized that within him, in spite of all, something of hope still lingered. Rosamund's letter to him had wrought already a wonderful change in his tortured life. The knowledge that he would see her again, be with her alone, even if only for an hour, even if only that he might tell her what would alienate her from him forever, thrilled through him, seemed even to shed a fierce strength and alertness through his body. Now that he was going to see her once more he knew what the long separation from her had meant to him. He had known the living death. Within a few hours he would have at least some moments of life. They would be terrible moments, shameful—but they would take him back into life. Fiercely, passionately, he looked forward to them.

He left his letter at the hotel, giving it into the hands of a weary Albanian night porter. Then he returned to his rooms, undressed, washed in cold water, and lay down on his bed. And presently he was praying in the dark, instinctively almost as a child prays. He was praying for the impossible. For he believed that it was absolutely impossible the Rosamund could ever forgive him for what he had done, and yet he prayed that she might forgive him. And he felt as if he were praying with all his body as well as with all his soul.

In the dawn he was tired. But he did not sleep at all.

About ten o'clock he went out to take the boat to Eyub.



CHAPTER XVI

At a few minutes past eleven Dion was in the vast cemetery on the hill. It was a gray morning, still and hot. Languor was in the air. The grayness, the silence, the oily waters, suggested a brooding resignation. The place of the dead was almost deserted. He wandered through it, and met only two or three Turks, who returned his glance impassively. After the sleepless night he had come out feeling painfully excited and scarcely master of himself. In Galata and on the boat he had not dared to look into the eyes of those who thronged about him. He had felt transparent, as if all his thoughts and his tumultuous feelings must be visible to any one who regarded him with attention. But now he was encompassed by a sensation of almost dull calmness. He looked at the grayness and at the innumerable graves, he was conscious of the stagnant heat, he seemed to draw into himself the wide silence, and the excitement faded out of him, was replaced by a curious inertia. Both his mind and his body felt tired and resigned. The gravestones suggested death, the end of the early hopes, aspirations, yearnings and despairs of men. A few bones and a headstone—to that he was traveling. And yet all through the night he had been on fire with longing, and with a fear that had seemed almost red hot. Now he thought he perhaps understood the fatalism of the Turk. Whatever must be must be. All was written surely from the beginning. It was written that to-day he should be alone in the cemetery of Eyub, and it was written that Rosamund should come to him there, or not come to him.

If she did not come?

He remembered the exact wording of his letter to her, and he realized for the first time that in her letter she had asked him to tell her how to go to their meeting-place "if it is difficult," and he had not told her what she had to do in order to come to Eyub.

But of course she had a dragoman, and he would bring her. She could not possibly come alone.

Perhaps, however, she would not come.

Long ago she had opened and read his letter and had taken her decision. If she was coming, probably she was already on the way. He forced himself to imagine the whole day passed by him alone in the cemetery, the light failing as the evening drew on, the darkness of night swallowing up Stamboul, the knowledge forced upon him that Rosamund had abandoned the idea of seeing him again. He imagined himself returning to Constantinople in the night, going to the Hotel de Byzance and learning that she had left by the Orient express of that day for England.

What would he feel?

A handful of bones and a headstone! Whatever happened to-day, and in the future, he was on his way to just that. Then, why agonize, why allow himself to be riven and tormented by longings and fears that seemed born out of something eternal? Perhaps, indeed, there was nothing at all after this short life was ended, nothing but the blank grayness of eternal unconsciousness. If so, how little even his love for Rosamund meant. It must be some bodily attraction, some imperious call to his flesh which he had mistaken for a far greater thing. Men, perhaps, are merely tricked by those longings of theirs which seem defiant of time, by those passionate tendernesses in which eternity seems breathing. All that they think they live by may be illusion.

Mechanically, as the minutes drew on towards noon, he walked towards the Tekkeh of the Dervishes. Once he had come here to meet Cynthia Clarke, and now he had deliberately chosen the same place for the terrible interview with his wife. It could only be terrible. He did not know what he was going to do and say when she came (if she did come), but he did know that somehow he would tell her the whole truth about himself, without, of course, mentioning the name of a woman. He would lay bare his soul. It was fitting that he should confess his sin in the place of its beginnings. He had begun to sin against the woman whom he could never unlove here in this wilderness of the dead, when he had spoken against her to the woman who had long ago resolved some day to make him sin. (He told himself now that he had definitely spoken against Rosamund.) In this sad place of disordered peace, under the gray, and within sight of the minarets lifted to the Unknown God, he had opened the book of evil things; in this place he would close it forever—if Rosamund came. He felt now that there was something within him which, despite all his perversity, all that he had given himself to in the fury of the flesh, was irrevocably dedicated to that which was sane, clean and healthy. By this he was resolved to live henceforth, not because of any religious feeling, not because of any love of that Unknown God who—so he supposed—had flung him into the furnace of suffering as refuse may be flung into a fire, but because he now began to understand that this dedicated something was really Him, was of the core of his being, not to be rooted out. He had left Cynthia Clarke. In a short time—before the gray faded over the minarets of Stamboul—Rosamund would have done with him forever. He faced complete solitude, the wilderness without any human soul, good or bad, to keep him company; but he faced it with a sort of hard and final resignation. By nightfall he would have done with it all. And then—the living Death? Yes, no doubt that would be his portion. He smiled faintly as he thought of his furious struggle against just that.

"It was written," he thought. "Everything is written. But we are tricked into a semblance of vigorous life and energy by our great delusion that we possess free will."

He sat down beneath a cypress and remained quite still, looking downward towards the water, downward along the path by which, if Rosamund came, she would ascend the hill towards him.

It was nearly noon when he saw below him on this path the figure of a woman walking slowly. She was followed by a man.

Dion got up. He could not really see who this woman was, but he knew who she was. Instantly he knew. And instantly all the calm, all the fatalism of which for a moment he had believed himself possessed, all the brooding resignation of the man who says to his soul, "It is written!" was swept away. He stood there, bare of his pretenses, and he knew himself for what he was, just a man who was the prisoner of a great love, a man shaken by the tempest of his feeling, a man who would, who must, fight against the living Death which, only a moment before, he had been contemplating even with a smile.

She had come, and with her life.

He put one arm against the seamed trunk of the cypress. Mechanically, and unaware what he was doing, he had taken off his hat. He held it in his hand. All the change which sorrow and excess had wrought upon him was exposed for Rosamund to see. She had last seen him plainly as he drove away with little Robin from the Green Court of Welsley on that morning of fate. Now at last she was to see him again as she had remade him.

She came on slowly. Presently she turned to her Greek dragoman.

"Where's the Tekkeh? Is it much farther?"

"No, Madame."

He pointed. As he did so Rosamund saw Dion's figure standing against the cypress. She stood still. Her face was white and drawn, but full of an almost flaming resolution. The mysticism which at moments Dion had detected in her expression, in her eyes, during the years passed with her, a mysticism then almost evasive, subtly withdrawn, shone now, like a dominating quality which scorned to hide itself, or perhaps could not hide itself. She looked like a woman under the influence of a fixed purpose, fascinated, drawn onward, almost in ecstasy, and yet somehow, somewhere, tormented.

"Please go back to the foot of the hill," she said to the Greek who was with her.

"But, Madame, I dare not leave you alone here."

"I shall not be alone."

The Greek looked surprised.

"Some one is waiting for me, up there, by that cypress—a—a friend."

"Oh—I see, Madame."

With a look of intense comprehension he turned to go.

"At the foot of the hill, please!" said Rosamund.

"Certainly, Madame."

The dragoman was smiling as he walked away. Rosamund stood still watching him till he was out of sight. Then she turned. The figure of a man was still standing motionless under the old cypress tree among the graves. She set her lips together and went towards it. Now that she saw Dion, even though he was in the distance, she felt again intensely, as if in her flesh, the bodily wrong he had done to her. She strove not to feel this. She told herself that, after her sin against him, she had no right to feel it. In her heart she knew that she was the greater sinner. She realized now exactly the meaning of what she had done. She had no more illusions about herself, about her conduct. She condemned herself utterly. She had come to that place of the dead absolutely resolved to ask forgiveness of Dion. And yet now that she saw his body the sense of personal outrage woke in her, gripped her. She grew hot, she tingled. A fierce jealousy of the flesh tormented her. And suddenly she was afraid of herself. Was her body then more powerful than her soul? Was she, who had always cared for the things of the soul hopelessly physical? It seemed to her that even now she might succumb to what she supposed was an overwhelming personal pride, that even now she might be unable to do what she had come all the long way from England to do. But she forced herself to go onward up the path. She looked down; she would not see that body of a man which had belonged to her and to which she had belonged; but she made herself go towards it.

Presently she felt that she was drawing near to it; then that she was close to it. Then she stopped. Standing still for a moment she prayed. She prayed that she might be able in this supreme crisis of her life to govern the baser part of herself, that she might be allowed, might be helped, to rise to those heights of which Father Robertson had spoken to her, that she might at last realize the finest possibilities of her nature, that she might be able to do the most difficult thing, to be humble, to forget any injury which had been inflicted upon herself, and to remember only the tremendous injury she had inflicted upon another. When her prayer was finished she did not know whether it had been heard, whether, if it had been heard, it had been accepted and would be granted. She did not know at all what she would be able to do. But she looked up and saw Dion. He was close to her, was standing just in front of her, with one arm holding the cypress trunk, trembling slightly and gazing at her, gazing at her with eyes that were terrible because they revealed so much of agony, of love and of terror. She looked into those eyes, she looked at the frightful change written on the face that had once been so familiar to her, and suddenly an immense pity inundated her. It seemed to her that she endured in that moment all the suffering which Dion had endured since the tragedy at Welsley added to her own suffering. She stood there for a moment looking at him. Then she said only:

"Forgive me, oh, forgive me!"

Tears rushed into her eyes. She had been able to say it. It had not been difficult to say. She could not have said anything else. And her soul had said it as well as her lips.

"Forgive me! Forgive me!" she repeated.

She went up to Dion, took his poor tortured temples, from which the hair, once so thick, had retreated, in her hands, and whispered again in the midst of her tears:

"Forgive me!"

"I've been false to you," he said huskily. "I've broken my vow to you. I've lived with another woman—for months. I've been a beast. I've wallowed. I've gone right down. Everything horrible—I've—I've done it. Only last night I meant to—to—I only broke away from it all last night. I heard you were here and then I—I——"

"Forgive me!"

She felt as if God were speaking in her, through her. She felt as if in that moment God had taken complete possession of her, as if for the first time in her life she was just an instrument, formed for the carrying out of His tremendous purposes, able to carry them out. Awe was upon her. But she felt a strange joy, and even a wonderful sense of peace.

"But you don't hear what I tell you. I have been false to you. I have sinned against you for months and months."

"Hush! It was my sin."

"Yours? Oh, Rosamund!"

She was still holding his temples. He put his hands on her shoulders.

"Yes, it was my sin. I understand now how you love me. I never understood till to-day."

"Yes, I love you."

"Then," she said, very simply. "I know you will be able to forgive me. Don't tell me any more ever about what you have done. It's blotted out. Just forgive me—and let us begin again."

She took away her hands from his temples. He did not kiss her, but he took one of her hands, and they stood side by side looking towards Stamboul, towards the City of the Unknown God. His eyes and hers were on the minarets, those minarets which seem to say to those who have come to them from afar, and whose souls are restless:

"In the East thou shalt find me if thou hast not found me in the West."

After a long silence Rosamund pressed Dion's hand, and it seemed to him that never, in the former days of their union—not even in Greece—had she pressed it with such tenderness, with such pulse-stirring intimacy and trust in him. Then, still with her eyes upon the minarets, she said in a low voice:

"I think Robin knows."



CHAPTER XVII

Not many days later, when the green valley of Olympia was wrapped in the peace of a sunlit afternoon, and a faint breeze drew from the pine trees on the hills of Kronos a murmur as of distant voices whispering the message of Eternity, the keeper of the house of the Hermes was disturbed in a profound reverie by the sound of slow footfalls not far from his dwelling. He stirred, lifted his head and stared vaguely about him. No travelers had come of late to the shrine he guarded. Hermes had been alone with the child upon his arm, dreaming of its unclouded future with the serenity of one who had trodden the paths where the gods walk, and who could rise at will above the shadowed ways along which men creep in anxiety, dreading false steps and the luring dangers of their fates. Hermes had been alone with his happy burden, forgotten surely by the world which his delicate majesty ignored without disdain. But now pilgrims, perhaps from a distant land, were drawing near to look upon him, to spend a little while in the atmosphere of his shining calm, perhaps to learn something of the message he had to give to those who were capable of receiving it.

A man and a woman, moving slowly side by side, came into the patch of strong sunshine which made a glory before the house, paused there and stood still.

From the shadow in which he was sitting the guardian examined them with the keen eyes of one who had looked upon travelers of many nations. He knew at once that the woman was English. As for the man—yes, probably he was English too, Dark, lean, wrinkled, he was no doubt an Englishman who had been much away from his own country, which the guardian conceived of as wrapped in perpetual fogs and washed by everlasting rains.

The guardian stared hard at this man, then turned his bright eyes again upon the woman. As he looked at her some recollection began to stir in his mind.

Not many travelers came twice to the green recesses of Elis. He was accustomed to brief acquaintanceships, closed by small gifts of money, and succeeded by farewells which troubled his spirit not at all. But this woman seemed familiar to him; and even the man——

He got up from his seat and went towards them.

As he came into the sunlight the woman saw him and smiled. And, when she smiled, he knew he had seen her before. The deep gravity of her face as she approached had nearly tricked his memory, but now he remembered all about her. She was the beautiful fair Englishwoman who had camped on the hill of Drouva not so many years ago, who had gone out shooting with that young rascal, Dirmikis, and who had spent solitary hours wrapt in contemplation of the statue whose fame doubtless had brought her to Elis.

Not so many years ago! But was this the man the husband who had been with her then, and who had evidently been deeply in love with her?

It seemed to the guardian that there was some puzzling change in the beautiful woman. As to the man——Still wondering, the guardian took off his cap politely and uttered a smiling welcome in Greek. Then the man smiled too, faintly, and still preserving the under-look of deep gravity, and the guardian knew him. It was indeed the husband, but grown to look very much older, and different in some almost mysterious way.

The woman made a gesture towards the museum. The guardian bowed, turned and moved to lead the way through the vestibule into the great room of the Victory. But the woman spoke behind him and he paused. He did not understand what she said, but the sound of her voice seemed to plead with him—or to command him. He looked at her and understood.

She was gazing at him steadily, and her eyes told him not to go before her, told him to stay where he was.

He nodded his head, slightly pursing his small mouth. She knew the way of course. How should she not know it?

Gently she came up to him and just touched his coat sleeve—to thank him. Then she went on slowly with her companion, traversed the room of the Victory, looking neither to right nor left, crossed the threshold of the smaller chamber beyond it and disappeared.

For a moment the guardian stood at gaze. Then he went back to his seat, sat down and sighed. A faint sense of awe had come upon him. He did not understand it, and he sighed again. Then, pulling himself together, he felt for a cigarette, lit it and began to smoke, staring at the patch of sunlight outside, and at the olive tree which grew close to the doorway.

* * * * *

Within the chamber of the Hermes for a long time there was silence. Rosamund was sitting before the statue. Dion stood near to her, but not close to her. The eyes of both of them were fixed upon Hermes and the child. Once again they were greeted by the strange and exquisite hush which seems, like a divine sentinel, to wait at the threshold of that shrine in Elis; once again the silence seemed to come out of the marble and to press softly against their two hearts. But they were changed, and so the great peace of the Hermes seemed to them subtly changed. They knew now the full meaning of torment—torment of the body and of the soul. They knew the blackness of rebellion. But they knew also, or at least were beginning to know, the true essence of peace. And this beginning of knowledge drew them nearer to the Hermes than they had been in the bygone years, than they had ever been before the coming of little Robin into their lives, and before Robin had left them, obedient to the call from beyond.

The olive branch was gone from the doorway. Something beautiful was missing from the picture of Elis which had reminded Rosamund of the glimpse of distant country in Raphael's "Marriage of the Virgin." And they longed to have it there, that little olive branch—ah, how they longed! There was pain in their hearts. But there was no longer the cruel fierceness of rebellion. They were able to gaze at the child on whom Hermes was gazing, if not with his celestial serenity yet with a resignation that was even subtly mingled with something akin to gratitude.

"Shall we reach that goal and take a child with us?"

Long ago that had been Dion's thought in Elis. And long ago Rosamund had broken the silence within that room by the words:

"I'm trying to learn something here, how to bring him up if he ever comes."

And now God had given them a child, and God had taken him from them. Robin had gone from all that was not intended, but that, for some inscrutable reason, had come to be. Robin was in the released world.

As the twilight began to fall another twilight came back flooding with its green dimness the memories of them both. And at last Rosamund spoke.

"Dion!"

"Yes."

"Come a little nearer to me."

He came close to her and stood beside her.

"Do you remember something you said to me here? It was in the twilight——"

She paused. Tears had come into her eyes and her voice had trembled.

"It was in the twilight. You said that it seemed to you as if Hermes were taking the child away, partly because of us."

Her voice broke.

"I—I disliked your saying that. I told you I couldn't feel that."

"I remember."

"And then you explained exactly what you meant. And we spoke of the human fear that comes to those who look at a child they love and think, 'what is life going to do to the child?' This evening I want to tell you that in a strange way I am able to be glad that Robin has gone, glad with some part of me that is more mother than anything else in me, I think. Robin is—is so safe now."

The tears came thickly and fell upon her face. She put out a hand to Dion. He clasped it closely.

"God took him away, and perhaps because of us. I think it may have been to teach us, you and me. Perhaps we needed a great sorrow. Perhaps nothing else could have taught us something we had to learn."

"It may be so," he almost whispered.

She got up and leaned against his shoulder.

"Whatever happens to me in the future," she said, "I don't think I shall ever distrust God again."

He put his arm round her and, for the first time since their reunion, he kissed her, and she returned his kiss.

Over Elis the twilight was falling, a green twilight, sylvan and very ethereal, tremulous in its delicate beauty. It stole through the green doors, and down through the murmuring pine trees. The sheep-bells were ringing softly; the flocks were going homeward from pasture; and the chime of their little bells mingled with the wide whispering of the eternities among the summits of the pine trees. Music of earth mingled with the music from a distance that knew what the twilight knew.

Presently the two marble figures in the chamber of the Hermes began to fade away gradually, as if deliberately withdrawing themselves from the gaze of men. At last only their outlines were visible to Rosamund and to Dion. But even these told of the Golden Age, of the age of long peace.

"FAREWELL!"

Some one had said it within that chamber, and a second voice had echoed it.

As the guardian of the Hermes watched the two pilgrims walking slowly away down the valley he noticed that the man's right arm clasped the woman's waist. And, so, they passed from his sight and were taken by the green twilight of Elis.

THE END