aid, 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 be