were naked and
could be seen by strangers. In Pera at least he was covered.

"I shall have to go away from here," he thought.

He got up from the bed and began to unpack. As he did this, the
uselessness of what he was doing, the arid futility of every bit of the
web of small details which, in their sum, were his life, flowed upon
his soul like stagnant water forced into movement by some horrible
machinery. He was like something agitating in a vast void, something
whose incessant movements produced no effect, had no sort of relation
to anything. In his loneliness of the cities he had begun to lose that
self-respect which belongs to all happy Englishmen of his type. Mrs.
Clarke had immediately noticed that certain details in his dress showed
a beginning of neglect. Since he had met her he had rectified them,
almost unconsciously. But now suddenly the burden of detail seemed
unbearable.

It was only by an almost fierce exercise of the will that he forced
himself to finish unpacking, and to lay his things out neatly in drawers
and on the dressing-table. Then he took off his boots and his jacket,
stretched himself out on the bed with his arms behind him and his hands
grasping the bedstead, and shut his eyes.

There was something shameful in his flaccid idleness, in the aimlessness
of his whole life now, devoid of all work, undirected towards any
effort. But that was not his fault. He had worked with energy in
business, with equal energy in play, worked for self's sake, for love's
sake, and for country's sake. And for all he had done, for his effort of
purity as a boy and a youth, for his effort of love as a husband and a
father, for his effort of valor as a soldier, he had been rewarded
with the most horrible punishment which can fall upon a man. Effort,
therefore, on his part was useless; it was worse than useless, it was
grotesque. Let others make their efforts, his were done.

He wished that he could sleep.

* * * * *

The dreadful inertia of Dion did not seem to be dreadful to Mrs. Clarke.
Perhaps she was more intelligent than most women, and generated within
herself so much energy of some kind that she was not driven to seek for
it in others; or perhaps she was more sympathetic, more imaginative,
than most women, and pardoned because she understood. At any rate, she
accepted Dion as he was, and neither criticized him, attempted to bully
him, nor seemed to wish to change him.

She had indeed insisted that he m