Mrs. Clarke was in her bedroom with the door open that evening when she
heard a bell sound in the flat. She had fixed eight for the dinner hour.
It was now only half-past six. Nevertheless she felt sure that it was
Dion who had just rung. She went swiftly across the room and shut the
bedroom door. Two or three minutes later Sonia came in.
“Mr. Leith has come already, Madame,” she said, looking straight at her
mistress.
“I expected him early, Sonia. You can tell him I will come almost
directly.”
“Yes, Madame.”
“Sonia, wait a minute! How am I looking this evening?”
“How?” said Sonia, with rather heavy emphasis.
“Yes. I feel--feel as if I were looking unlike my usual self.”
Sonia stared hard at Mrs. Clarke. Then she said:
“So you are, Madame.”
“In what way?”
“You look almost excited and younger than usual.”
“Younger!”
“Yes, as if you were expecting something, almost as a girl expects. I
never saw you just like this before.”
Mrs. Clarke looked at herself in a mirror earnestly, and for a long
time.
“That’s all, Sonia,” she said, turning round. “You can tell Mr. Leith.”
Sonia went out.
Mrs. Clarke followed her ten minutes later. When she came into the
little hall she saw lying on a table beside Dion’s hat several letters.
She stopped by the table and looked down at them. They lay there in
a pile held together by an elastic band, and she could only see the
writing on the envelope which was at the top. It was addressed to Dion
and had been through the post. She wondered whether among those letters
there was one from Rosamund. Had she written to the husband whom she had
cast out to tell him of the great change which had led her to give up
the religious life, to come out to the land of the cypress?
Mrs. Clarke glanced round; then she bent down noiselessly, picked up
the packet, slipped off the elastic band and examined the letters one by
one. She had never chanced to see Rosamund’s handwriting, but she felt
sure she would know at once if she held in her hand the letter which
might mean her own release. She did not find it; but on two envelopes
she saw Beatrice’s delicate handwriting, which she knew very well. She
longed to know what Beatrice had written. With a sigh she slipped the
elastic band back into its place, put the packet down and went into the
drawing-room.
Directly she saw Dion she was certain that he knew nothing of the change
in Rosamund’s life. There was no excitement in his thin and wrinkled
brown face; no expectation lit up his sunken eyes making them youthful.
He looked hard, wretched and strangely old, but ruthless and forceful in
a kind of shuttered and ravaged way. She thought of a ruined house with
a cold strong light in the window. He was sitting when she came in,
leaning forward, with his hands hanging down between his knees. When he
saw her he got up slowly.
“I was near here and had nothing to do, so I came early,” he said, not
apologetically, but carelessly.
He looked at her and added:
“What’s happened to you to-day?”
“Nothing. What an extraordinary question!”
“Is it? You look different. There’s a change.”
A suspicious expression made his face ugly.
“Have you met any one?”
“Of course. How can one go out in Constantinople without meeting
people?”
“Any one new, I meant.”
“No.”
“You look as if you had.”
“Do I?” she said, with indifference.
“Yes. You look--I don’t know----”
He paused.
“I think it’s younger,” he added. “You never are tired or ill, but you
generally look both. To-day you don’t.”
“Please don’t blame me for looking moderately well for once in my life.”
“Why did you ask me to dinner here?”
The sound of his voice was as suspicious as the expression on his face.
“Oh, I don’t know. Once in a while it doesn’t matter. And all the
servants have gone away to Buyukderer.”
“Then you are going there?”
“I’m not sure if I shall be able to stay there for more than a few days
if I do go.”
“Why not?” he said slowly.
“It’s just possible I may have to go over to England on business.
Something’s gone wrong with my money matters, not the money my husband
allows me, but my own money. I had a letter from my lawyer.”
“When?”
“To-day.”
He stood before her in silence.
“By the way,” she added, “I saw all those letters for you on the hall
table. Why don’t you read them?”
“Going to England, are you?” he said, frowning.
“I may have to.”
“Surely you must know from your lawyer’s letter whether it will be
necessary or not.”
“I expect it will be necessary.”
He turned slowly away from her and went to the window, where he stood
for a moment, apparently looking out. She sat down on the sofa and
glanced at the clock. How were they to get through a long evening
together? She wished she could bring about a crisis in their relations
abruptly. Dion turned round. He had his hands in his pockets.
“I wish you’d let me look at that lawyer’s letter,” he said.
“It wouldn’t interest you.”
“If it’s about money matters I might be able to help you. You know they
used to be my job. Even now anything to do with investments----”
“Oh, I won’t bother you,” she said coolly. “I always do business through
some one I can pay.”
“Well, you can pay me.”
“No, I can’t.”
“But I say you can.”
“How?” she said.
And instantly she regretted having asked the question.
He looked at her in silence for a minute, then he said:
“By sticking always to me, by proving yourself loyal.”
Her mouth twitched. The intense irony in the last word made her feel
inclined to laugh hysterically.
“But you don’t always behave in such a way as to make me feel loyal,”
she said, controlling herself.
“I’m going to try to be more clever with you in the future.”
She got up abruptly.
“I didn’t expect you quite so early, and I’ve got a letter to write to
Jimmy--”
“And a letter to your lawyer!” he interrupted.
“No, that can wait till to-morrow. I must think things over. But I must
write to Jimmy now.”
“Give him a kind message from me.”
“What will you do while I am writing?”
“I’ll sit here.”
“But do something! Why not read your letters?”
“Yes, I may as well look at them. There was quite a collection waiting
for me at the British Post Office. I haven’t been there for months.”
“Why don’t you go more regularly?”
“Because I’ve done with the past!” he exclaimed, with sudden savagery.
“And letters from home only rake it up.”
She looked at him narrowly.
“But have we ever done with the past?” she said, with her eyes upon him.
“If we think so isn’t that a stupidity on our part?”
“You’re talking like a parson!”
“Even a parson may hit upon a truth now and then.”
“It depends upon oneself. I say I have done with the past.”
“And yet you’re afraid to read letters from England.”
“I’m not.”
“And you never go to England.”
“There’s nothing to prevent me from going to England.”
“Except your own feelings about things.”
“One gets over feelings with the help of Time. I’m not such a sensitive
fool as I used to be. Life has knocked all that sort of rot out of me.”
She sat down at the writing-table from which Jimmy’s photograph had
vanished.
“Read your letters, or read a book,” she said.
And she picked up a pen.
She did not look at him again, and she tried hard to detach her mind
from him. She took a sheet of writing-paper, and began to write to
Jimmy, but she was painfully aware of Dion’s presence in the room, of
every slightest movement that he made. She heard him sit down and move
something on a table, then sigh; complete silence followed. She felt as
if her whole body were flushing with irritation. Why didn’t he get his
letters? She was positive Beatrice had written to tell him that Rosamund
had left the Sisterhood, and she was longing to know what effect that
news would have upon him.
Presently he moved again and got up, and she heard him go over to the
window. She strove, with a bitter effort, to concentrate her thoughts on
Jimmy, but now the Bedouin came between her and the paper; she saw him
striding indifferently through the blaze of sunshine.
“About the summer holidays this year--I am not quite sure yet what my
plans will be----” she wrote slowly.
Dion was moving again. He came away from the window, crossed the room
behind her, and opened the door. He was going to fetch his letters. She
wrote hurriedly on. He went out into the little hall and returned.
“I’m going to have a look at my letters,” he said, behind her.
She glanced round.
“What did you say? Oh--your letters.”
“They look pretty old,” he said, turning them over.
She saw Beatrice’s handwriting.
“Here’s one from Beatrice Daventry,” he added, in a hard voice.
“Does she often write to you?”
“She hasn’t written for a long time.”
He thrust a finger under the envelope. Mrs. Clarke turned and again bent
over her letter to Jimmy.
* * * * *
“Dinner is ready, Madame!”
Mrs. Clarke looked up from the writing-table at Sonia standing squarely
in the doorway, then at the clock.
“Dinner! But it’s only a quarter-past seven.”
“I thought you ordered it for a quarter-past seven, Madame,” replied
Sonia, with quiet firmness.
“Oh, did I? I’d forgotten.”
She pushed away the writing-paper and got up.
“D’you mind dining so early?” she asked Dion, looking at him for the
first time since he had read his letters.
“No,” he replied, in a voice which had no color at all. His face was set
like a mask.
“Do you want to wash your hands? If so, Sonia will bring you some hot
water to the spare room.”
“Thanks, I’ll go; but I prefer cold water.”
He went out of the room carrying the opened letters with him. After a
moment Sonia came back.
“I hope I didn’t do wrong about dinner, Madame,” she said. “I thought as
Monsieur Leith came so early Madame would wish dinner earlier.”
Mrs. Clarke put her hand on her servant’s substantial arm.
“You always understand things, Sonia,” she said. “I’m tired. I mean to
go to bed very early to-night.”
“But will he----?”
She raised her heavy eyebrows.
“I must rest to-night,” said Mrs. Clarke. “I must, I must.”
“Let me tell him, then, if he--”
“No, no.”
Mrs. Clarke put one hand to her lips. She heard Dion in the hall. When
he came in she saw at once that he had been dashing cold water on his
face. His eyes fell before hers. She could not divine what he had found
in his letters or what was passing in his mind.
“Come to dinner,” she said.
And they went at once to the dining-room.
During the meal they talked because Mrs. Clarke exerted herself. She was
helped, perhaps, by her concealed excitement. She had never before felt
so excited, so almost feverishly alert in body and mind as she felt that
night, except at the climax of her divorce case. And she was waiting now
for condemnation or acquittal as she had waited then. It was horrible.
She was painfully conscious of a desperate strength in Dion. It was as
if he had grown abruptly, and she had as abruptly diminished. His savage
assertion about the past had impressed her disagreeably. It might be
true. He might really have succeeded in slaying his love for his wife.
If so, what chance had the woman who had taken him of regaining her
freedom of action. She was afraid to play her last card.
When dinner was over Dion said:
“Shall we be off?”
She did not ask where they were going; she had no need to ask. After a
moment’s hesitation she said:
“Not just yet. Come into the drawing-room. You can smoke, and if you
like I’ll play you something.”
“All right.”
They went into the drawing-room. It was dimly lighted. Blinds and
curtains were drawn. Dion sank down heavily in a chair.
“The cigarettes are there!”
“Yes, I see. Thanks.”
A strange preoccupation seemed to be descending upon him and to be
covering him up. Sonia came in with coffee. Dion put his cup, full, down
beside him on a table. He did not sip the coffee, nor did he light a
cigarette. While Mrs. Clarke was drinking her coffee he sat without
uttering a word.
She went to the piano. She played really well. Otherwise she would not
have played to him, or to any one. She was specially at home in the
music of Chopin, and had studied minutely many of the “Etudes.” Now
she began to play the Etude in E flat. As she played she felt that
the intense nervous irritation which had possessed her was diminishing
slightly, was becoming more bearable. She played several of the Etudes,
and presently began the one in Thirds and Sixths which she had once
found abominably difficult. She remembered what a struggle she had had
with it before she had conquered it. She had been quite a girl then,
but already she had been a worshipper of will-power, and had resolved to
cultivate and to increase her own will. And she had used this Etude as
a means of testing herself. Over and over again, when she had almost
despaired of ever overcoming its difficulties, she had said to herself,
“Vouloir c’est pouvoir;” and at last she had succeeded in playing the
excessively difficult music as if it were quite easy to her. That had
been the first stepping upwards towards power.
She remembered that now and she set her teeth. “Vouloir c’est pouvoir.”
She had proved the saying true again and again; she must prove it true
to-night. She willed her release; she would somehow obtain it.
Directly she finished the Etude she got up from the piano.
“You play that wonderfully well,” Dion said, with a sort of hard
recognition of her merit, but with no enthusiasm. “Do you know that
there’s something damnably competent in you?”
She stood looking down on him.
“I’m very glad there is. I don’t care to bungle what I undertake.”
“I believe I knew that the first time I saw you, standing by Echo. You
held my hand that day. Do you remember?”
He laughed faintly.
“No, I don’t remember.”
“The hand of Stamboul was upon me then. By God, we are under the yoke.
It was fated then that you should destroy me.”
“Destroy you?”
“Yes. What’s the good of what lies between us? You’ve destroyed me.
That’s why you want to get rid of me. Your instinct tells you the work
is done, and you’re right. But you must stick to the wreckage. After
all, it’s your wreckage.”
“No. A man can only destroy himself,” she said, with cold defiance.
“Don’t let’s argue about it. The thing’s done--done!”
In his voice there was a sound of almost wild despair, but his face
preserved its hard, mask-like look.
“And there’s no returning from destruction,” he added. “Those who try to
fancy there is are just fools.”
He looked up at her as she stood before him, and seemed suddenly struck
by the expression on her face.
“Who’s to be the one to destroy you?” he said. “D’you think the Unknown
God has singled me out for the job? Or do you really expect to escape
scot-free after making the sign of the cross over so many lost souls.”
“The sign of the cross?”
“Yes. Don’t you remember when I told you of Brayfield’s death? You’ve
never given him a thought since, I suppose. But I’ll make you keep on
thinking about me.”
“What has happened to-night?” she asked sharply.
“Happened?”
“To make you talk like this?”
“Nothing has happened.”
“That’s not true. Since you came into the house you’ve quite changed.”
“Merely because I’ve been reckoning things up, taking stock of the
amount of damage that’s been done. It’ll have to be paid for, I suppose.
Everything’s paid for in the end, isn’t it? When are you going to
England?”
“I didn’t say it was absolutely decided.”
“No; but it is. I want to know the date, so that I may pack up to
accompany you. It will be jolly to see Jimmy again. I shall run down to
Eton and take him out.”
“I am not going to allow you to do me any harm. Because lately I’ve
given in to you sometimes, you mustn’t think you can make a slave of
me.”
“And you mustn’t think you’ll get rid of me in one way if you can’t in
another. This English project is nothing but an attempt to give me the
slip. You thought I couldn’t face England, so you chose England as the
place you would travel to. You’ve never had a letter from your lawyer,
and there’s no reason why you should go to England on business. But I
can face England. I’ve never done anything _there_ that I’m ashamed of.
My record there is a clean one.”
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.