away and went to the window farthest from her. He leaned out
to the Grande Rue. Above his head was the sloping awning. It seemed to
him to serve as a sounding-board to the fierce noises of the mongrel
city.

"Start again!"

Surely among the voices of the city now filling his ears there was a
husky voice which had said that.

Had Mrs. Clarke spoken?

"Start again."

But not on the familiar road! To do that would be impossible. If there
were indeed any new life for him it must be an utterly different life
from any he had known.

He had tried the straight life of unselfishness, purity, fidelity and
devotion--devotion to a woman and also to a manly ideal. That life had
convulsively rejected him. Had he still within him sufficient energy of
any kind to lay hold on a new life?

For a moment he saw before him under the awning Robin's eyes as they had
been when his little son was dying in his arms.

He drew back from the street. The sitting-room was empty, but the door
between it and the bedroom was open. No doubt Mrs. Clarke had gone in
there to put away her hat. As he looked at the door the Russian maid,
whom he had seen at Park Side, Knightsbridge, came from the inner room.

"Madame hopes Monsieur will call to see her to-morrow before she starts
to Buyukderer," she said, with her strong foreign accent.

"Thank you," said Dion.

As he went out the maid shut the bedroom door.

CHAPTER III

Two days later Mrs. Clarke sat with the British Ambassadress in the
British Palace at Therapia, a building of wood with balconies looking
over the Bosporus. She was alone with Lady Ingleton in the latter's
sitting-room, which was filled with curious Oriental things, with
flowers, and with little dogs of the Pekinese breed, who lay about in
various attitudes of contentment, looking serenely imbecile, and as if
they were in danger of water on the brain.

Lady Ingleton was an old friend of Mrs. Clarke, and was a woman wholly
indifferent to the prejudices which govern ordinary persons. She had
spent the greater part of her life abroad, and looked like a weary
Italian, though she was half English, a quarter Irish, and a quarter
French. She was very dark, and had large, dreamy dark eyes which knew
how to look bored, a low voice which could say very sharp things at
times, and a languid manner which concealed more often than it betrayed
an intelligence always on the alert.

"What is it, Cynthia?" said Lady Ingleton. "But firs