ts voices are
spurious voices. To-morrow morning, before I go back, you and I will go
to Eyub."

"To the dust and the silence and the cypresses--O God!" said Dion.

He got up from his chair. He was beginning to tremble. Was it coming
upon him at last then, the utter breakdown which through all these
months he had--somehow--kept at a distance? Determined not to shake,
he exerted his will violently, till he felt as if he were with dreadful
difficulty holding, keeping together, a multitude of living, struggling
things, which were trying to get away out of his grasp. And these living
things were the multitudinous parts of the whole which was himself.

All that now was had been foreshadowed. There had been writing on the
wall.

"I am grateful to you for several things. I'm not going to give you the
list now. Some day, perhaps, I shall tell you what they are . . . among
the cypresses of Eyub."

She had said that to him in London, and her voice had been fatalistic as
she spoke; and in the street that same day, on his way home, the voice
of the boy crying the last horror had sounded to him like a voice from
the sea, a strange and sad cry lifted up between Europe and Asia. And
now----

"How did you know?" he said. "How did you know that we should be here
together some day?"

"Sit down. You must sit down."

She put her languid and imperative hand on his wrist, and he sat down.
He took her hand and put it against his forehead for a moment. But that
was no use. For her hand seemed to add fever to his fever.

"I have seen you standing amongst graves in the shadow of cypress
trees," he said. "In England I saw you like that. But--how did you
know?"

"Drink your tea. Don't hurry. We've got such a long time."

"I have. I have all the days and nights--every hour of them--at my own
disposal. I'm the freest man on earth, I suppose. No work, no ties."

"You've given up everything?"

"Oh, of course. That is, the things that were still left to me to give
up. They didn't mean much."

"Eat something," she said, in a casual voice, pushing a plate of
delicious little cakes towards him.

"Thank you."

He took one and ate. He regained self-control, but he knew that at any
moment, if anything unusual happened, or if he dared to think, or to
talk, seriously about the horror of his life, he would probably go down
with a crash into an abyss in which all of his manhood, every scrap of
his personal dignity, would be utterly lost. An