“Very much indeed.”

“Then I’ll—­”

An extremely pale man, with long, alarmingly straight hair and wandering eyes almost the color of silver, said something to her.

“Watteau?  Oh, no—­he died in 1721, not in 1722,” she replied.  “The only date I can never remember is William the Conqueror.  But of course you couldn’t remember about Watteau.  It’s distance makes memory.  You’re too near.”

“That’s the fan painter, Murphy-Elphinston, Watteau’s reincarnation,” she added to Dion.  “He’s always asking questions about himself.  Cynthia—­this is Mr. Dion Leith.  He wishes——­” She drifted away, not, however, without dexterously managing to convey Mr. Darlington with her.

Dion found himself looking into the large, distressed eyes of Mrs. Clarke.  Daventry was standing close to her, but, with a glance at his friend, moved away.

“I should like to sit down,” said Mrs. Clarke.

“Here are two chairs——­”

“No, I’d rather sit over there under the Della Robbia.  I can see Echo from there.”

She walked very slowly and languidly, as if tired, to a large and low sofa covered with red, which was exactly opposite to the statuette.  Dion followed her, thinking about her age.  He supposed her to be about thirty-two or thirty-three, possibly a year or two more or less.  She was very simply dressed in a gray silk gown with black and white lines in it.  The tight sleeves of it were unusually long and ended in points.  They were edged with some transparent white material which rested against her small hands.

She sat down and he sat down by her, and they began to talk.  Unlike Mrs. Chetwinde, Mrs. Clarke showed that she was alertly attending to all that was said to her, and, when she spoke, she looked at the person to whom she was speaking, looked steadily and very unself-consciously.  Dion mentioned that he had once been to Constantinople.

“Did you care about it?” said Mrs. Clarke, rather earnestly.

“I’m afraid I disliked it, although I found it, of course, tremendously interesting.  In fact, I almost hated it.”

“That’s only because you stayed in Pera,” she answered, “and went about with a guide.”

“But how do you know?”—­he was smiling.

“Well, of course you did.”

“Yes.”

“I could easily make you love it,” she continued, in an oddly impersonal way, speaking huskily.

Dion had never liked huskiness before, but he liked it now.

“You are fond of it, I believe?” he said.

His eyes met hers with a great deal of interest.

He considered her present situation an interesting one; there was drama in it; there was the prospect of a big fight, of great loss or great gain, destruction or vindication.

In her soul already the drama was being played.  He imagined her soul in turmoil, peopled with a crowd of jostling desires and fears, and he was thinking a great many things about her, and connected with her, almost simultaneously—­so rapidly a flood of thoughts seemed to go by in the mind—­as he put his question.