“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.”

Dion smiled as he recalled Mrs. Clarke’s words, which had been spoken fatalistically.  Then his face became very grave.

Suddenly there dawned upon him, like a vision in the London street, one of the vast Turkish cemeteries, dusty, forlorn, disordered, yet full of a melancholy touched by romance; and among the thousands of graves, through the dark thickets of cypresses, he was walking with Mrs. Clarke, who looked exactly like Echo.

A newsboy at the corner was crying his latest horror—­a woman found stabbed in Hyde Park.  But to Dion his raucous and stunted voice sounded like a voice from the sea, a strange and sad cry lifted up between Europe and Asia.

BOOK III —­ LITTLE CLOISTERS

CHAPTER I

More than a year and a half passed away, and in the autumn of 1899 the Boer War broke out and the face of England was changed; for the heart of England began to beat more strongly than usual, and the soul of England was stirred.  The winter came, and in many Englishmen a hidden conflict began; in their journey through life they came abruptly to a parting of the ways, stood still and looked to the right and the left, balancing possibilities, searching their natures and finding within them strange hesitations, recoils, affirmations, determined nobilities.

Dion had followed the events which led up to the fateful decision of Wednesday, October the eleventh, with intense interest.  As the October days drew on he had felt the approach of war.  It came up, this footfall of an enemy, it paced at his side.  Would he presently be tried by this enemy, would it test him and find out exactly what metal he was made of?  He wondered, but from the moment when the first cloud showed itself on the horizon he had a presentiment that this distant war was going to have a strong effect on his life.

On the afternoon of October the eleventh he walked slowly home from the City alone.  There was excitement in the air.  The voices of the newsvendors sounded fateful in his ears; the faces of the passers-by looked unusually eager and alert.  As he made his way through the crowd he did not debate the rights and wrongs of the question about to be decided between Briton and Boer.  His mind avoided thoughts about politics.  For him, perhaps strangely, the issue had already narrowed down to a personal question:  “What is this war going to mean to me?”

He asked himself this; he put the question again and again.  Nevertheless it was answered somewhere within him almost as soon as it was put.  If there came a call for volunteers he would be one of the many who would answer it.  The call might not come, of course; the war might be short, a hole-and-corner affair soon ended.  He told himself that, and, as he did so, he felt sure that the call would come.