stay.

He wondered a little, but only a little, about her will. Then his mind
returned to an old haunt in which continually it wandered, obsessed by
a horror that seemed already ancient, the walled garden at Welsley in
which he had searched in the dark for a fleeing woman. Perpetually he
heard the movement of that woman's dress as she disappeared into the
darkness, and the sound of a door, the door of his own home, being
locked against him to give her time to escape from him. That sound had
cut his life in two. He saw, as he had seen many times in the past, the
falling downwards of edges that bled, the edges of his severed life.

And he forgot the garden of the Villa Hafiz, the pavilion which stood on
the hill looking over the sea to Asia, the grave woman who had told him,
indifferently, that he could go to it when he would.

Nevertheless on the following day he found himself at the garden
gate; he rang the bell; he was admitted by Osman, the placidly smiling
gardener, and he ascended to the pavilion. No one was there. He stayed
for three hours, and nobody came to interrupt him. Down below the wooden
villa held closely the secret of its life. Once, as he gazed down on
it, he wondered for a moment about Mrs. Clarke, how she passed her
hours without a companion, which she was doing just then. The siren of
a steamer sounded in the bay. He went into the pavilion. On one of the
coffee-tables he found lying a small thin book bound in white vellum. He
took it up and read the name in gold letters: "The Kasidah of Haji Abdu
El-Yezdi." It was the book he had found Beattie reading on the night
when Robin was born, on the night when Bruce Evelin and Guy had
discussed Mrs. Clarke's divorce case and Mrs. Clarke. He shuddered in
the warmth of the pavilion. Then resolutely he picked the book up.
At the beginning, after some blank pages, there was a portrait of Sir
Richard Burton. Dion looked at the strong, tragic face, with its burning
expression, for a long time. Then he stretched himself on one of the
divans and began to read the book.

Down below, in the villa, Mrs. Clarke was sitting in the green-and-blue
room in the first floor with Lady Ingleton, and they were talking about
Dion.

"He's here now," said Mrs. Clarke to her friend.

"Where?"

"In the garden. I haven't seen him, but Osman tells me he has gone up to
the pavilion."

"We can stroll up there later on, and then you can introduce him if you
want to."

"No."