She paused.  She had deliberately driven home her meaning by a stress on one word.  Now she sat looking at him, with a wide-eyed and deeply grave fixity, as if considering what more she should say.  Dion murmured something about being very glad if he could help her in any way with regard to Jimmy.

“You can be conventional,” she remarked.  “Well, why not?  Most English people are perpetually playing for safety.”

“I wish you wouldn’t go back to Constantinople,” said Dion.

“Why?”

“I believe it’s a mistake.  It seems to me like throwing down a defiance to your world.”

“But I never play for safety.”

“But think of the danger you’ve passed through.”

The characteristic distressed look deepened in her eyes till they seemed to him tragic.  Nevertheless, fearlessness still looked out of them.

“What shall I gain by doing that?” she asked.

“Esme Darlington once said you were a wild mind in an innocent body.  I believe he was right.  But it seems to me that some day your wild mind may get you into danger again and that perhaps you won’t escape from it unscathed a second time.”

“How quiet and safe it must be at Number 5!” she rejoined, without any irony.

“You wouldn’t care for that sort of life.  You’d find it humdrum,” said Dion, with simplicity.

“You never would,” she said, still without irony, without even the hint of a sneer.  “And the truth is that the humdrum is created not by a way of living but by those who follow it.  Your wife and the humdrum could never occupy the same house.  I shall always regret that I didn’t see something of her.  Do give her a cordial ‘au revoir’ from me.  You’ll hear of me again.  Don’t be frightened about me in your kind of chivalrous heart.  I am grateful to you for several things.  I’m not going to give the list now.  That would either bore you, or make you feel shy.  Some day, perhaps, I shall tell you what they are, in a caique on the sweet waters of Asia or among the cypresses of Eyub.”

With the last sentence she transported Dion, as on a magic carpet, to the unwise life.  Her husky voice changed a little; her face changed a little too; the one became slower and more drowsy; the other less haggard and fixed in its expression of distress.  This woman had her hours of happiness, perhaps even of exultation.  For a moment Dion envisaged another woman in her.  And when he had bidden her good-by, and had received the tremendous farewells of Jimmy, he realized that she had made upon him an impression which, though soft, was certainly deep.  He thought of how a cushion looks when it lies on a sofa in an empty room, indented by the small head of a woman who has been thinking, thinking alone.  For a moment he was out of shape, and Mrs. Clarke had made him so.

In the big hall, as he passed out, he saw Lord Brayfield standing in front of the bureau speaking to the hall porter.