'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