samund, the same thing which
had held him up in many difficult days in South Africa, and had kept him
cheerful and bravely gay through the long separation from all he cared
for, the same thing which had begun to dominate Rosamund during those
few short days at Welsley, the brief period of reunion in happiness
which had preceded the crash into the abyss; it was the fiery spark
of Dion's strength which not all his weakness had succeeded in
extinguishing, a strength which had made for good in the past, a
strength which might make for evil in the future.

Did Mrs. Clarke know of this strength, and was she subtly appealing to
it?

"Pluck the old woman from thy breast."

Again and again Dion repeated those words to himself, and he saw
himself, an ineffably tragic, because a weak figure, feebly drifting
with his black misery through cities which knew him not, wandering
alone, sitting alone, peering at the lives of others, watching their
vices without interest, without either approval or condemnation, staring
with dull eyes at their fetes and their funerals, their affections,
their cruelties, their passions, their crimes. He saw himself in a
garden at Pera staring at painted women, neither desiring them nor
turning from them with any disgust. He saw himself--as an old woman. A
smoldering defiance within him sent out a spurt of scorching flame.

* * * * *

Sitting alone by the stream in the Valley of Roses Dion heard the
sound of steps, and presently saw a slight, very refined-looking man
in riding-breeches, with a hunting-crop in his hand, coming down to the
bank. He sat down on a rough wooden bench under a willow tree, lit a
cigar and gazed into the water. He had large, imaginative gray eyes.
There was something military and something poetic in his manner and
bearing and in his whole appearance. Almost directly from a little
rustic cafe close by a Greek lad came, carrying a wooden stool. On it he
placed a steaming brass coffee pot, a cup and saucer, sugar, a stick of
burning incense in a tiny vase, and a rose with a long stalk. Then he
went swiftly away, looking very intelligent. The stranger--obviously
an Englishman--picked up the rose, held it, smelt it, laid it down and
began to sip his coffee. Then in a very casual, easy-going way, like a
man who was naturally sociable, and who enjoyed having a word with any
one whom he came across, he began to speak to Dion.

When that day died Dion stood alone looking down into th