ed
to her will. I don't know why. I never know why I do what Cynthia
Clarke wishes. There are people like that; they just get what they want,
because they want it with force, I suppose. Most of us are rather weak,
I think. Cynthia Clarke hunted Dion Leith in his misery, and I helped
her. Being an ambassadress I have social influence on the Bosporus, and
I used it for Cynthia. I knew from the very first what she was about,
what she meant to do. Directly she mentioned Dion Leith to me and asked
me to invite him to the Embassy and be kind to him I understood. But
I didn't know Dion Leith then. If I had thoroughly known him I should
never have been a willing cat's-paw in a very ugly game. But once I had
begun--I took them both for a yachting trip--I did not know how to
get out of it all. On that yachting trip--I realized how that man was
suffering and what he was. I have never before known a man capable of
suffering so intensely as Dion Leith suffers. Does his wife know how he
loves her? Can she know it? Can she ever have known it?"

Father Robertson was silent. As she looked at his eyelids--his eyes no
longer met hers with their luminous glowing sincerity--Lady Ingleton
realized that he was the Confessor.

"Sometimes I have been on the verge of saying to him, 'Go back to
England, go to your wife. Tell her, show her what she has done. Put up
a big fight for the life of your soul.' But I have never been able to
do it. A grief like that is holy ground, isn't it? One simply can't set
foot upon it. Besides, I scarcely ever see Dion Leith now. He's gone
down, I think, gone down very far."

"Where is he?"

"In Constantinople. I saw him by chance in Stamboul, near Santa Sophia,
just before I left for England. Oh, how he has changed! Cynthia Clarke
is destroying him. I know it. Once she told me he had been an athlete
with ideals. But now--now!"

Again the tears started into her eyes. Father Robertson looked up and
saw them.

"Poor, poor fellow!" she said. "I can't bear to see him destroyed. Some
men--well, they seem almost entirely body. But he's so different!"

She got up and stood by the fire.

"I have seen Mrs. Leith," she said. "I once heard her sing in London.
She is extraordinarily beautiful. At that time she looked radiant. What
did you say?"

"Please go on," Father Robertson said, very quietly.

"And she had a wonderful expression of joyous goodness which marked her
out from other women. You have a regard for h