d grow till they were almost unendurable, might even lead his feet
to the room upstairs, the room forbidden to him to-night. So he called
to Mrs. Clarke, and at last, obedient to his insistent demand, she came
and did her best for him, came, he imagined, from Constantinople, to
keep him company in this night of crisis.

As Daventry had described her, as Bruce Evelin had, with casual
allusions and suggestive hints, built her up before Dion in the talk
after dinner that night, so she was now in the little room: a woman
of intellect and of great taste, with an intense love for, and fine
knowledge of, beautiful things: a woman who was almost a sensualist in
her adoration for fine and rare things.

"I detest the sensation of sinking down in things!"

Who had said that once with energy in Dion's hearing? Oh--Rosamund, of
course! But she must not be admitted into Dion's life in these hours of
waiting. Mrs. Clarke must be allowed to reign. She had come (in Dion's
imagination) all the way from the city of wood and of marble beside the
seaway of the Golden Horn, a serious, intellectual and highly cultivated
woman, whom a cruel fate--Kismet--was now about to present to the world
as a horrible woman. Pale, thin, rather melancholy she was, a reader of
many books, a great lover of nature, a woman who cared very much for
her one child. Why should Fate play such a woman such a trick? Perhaps
because she was very unconventional, and it is unwise for the bird which
sings in the cage of diplomacy to sing any but an ordinary song.

Daventry had dwelt several times on Mrs. Clarke's unconventionality;
evidently the defense meant to lay stress on it.

So now Dion sat with a pale, thin, unconventional woman, and she told
him about the life at Stamboul. She knew, of course, that he had hated
Constantinople. He allowed her to know that. And she pointed out to him
that he knew nothing of the wonderful city, upon which Russia breathes
from the north, and which catches, too, strange airs and scents and
murmurs of voices from distant places of Asia. What does the passing
tourist of a Pera hotel know about the great city of the Turks? Nothing
worth knowing. The roar of the voices of the Levant deafens his ears;
the glitter of the shop windows in the Grande Rue blinds his eyes. He
knows not the exquisite and melancholy charm, full of nuances and of the
most fragile and evanescent subtleties, which Constantinople holds for
those who know her and lo