By the quick train at nine o’clock Dion left Welsley next morning; he was in London by half-past ten.  He had of course written to Mrs. Clarke asking if he could see her.  She had given him an appointment for three o’clock at the flat she had taken for a few months in Park Side, Knightsbridge.  Dion went first to the City, and after doing some business there, and lunching with his uncle at the Cheshire Cheese, got into a cab and drove to Knightsbridge.

Mrs. Clarke’s flat was on the first floor of a building which faced the street on one side and Hyde Park on the other.  Dion rang at a large, very solid oak door.  In two or three minutes the door was opened by an elderly maid, with high cheek-bones and long and narrow light gray eyes, who said, with a foreign accent, that Mrs. Clarke was at home.  Afterwards Dion knew that this woman was a Russian and Mrs. Clarke’s own maid.

She showed Dion into a long curving hall in which a fire was burning.  Here he left his hat and coat.  While he was taking the coat off he had time to think, “What an original hall this is!” From it he got an impression of warmth and of a pleasant dimness.  He had really no time to look carefully about, but a quick glance told him that there were interesting things in this hall, or at any rate interestingly combined.  He was conscious of the stamp of originality.

The Russian maid showed him into a drawing-room and went away to tell “Madame.”  She did not go out by the hall, but walked the whole length of the long narrow drawing-room, and passed through a small doorway at its farther end.  Through this doorway there filtered into the drawing-room a curious blue light.  All the windows of the drawing-room looked into Hyde Park, on to the damp grass, the leafless trees, the untenanted spaces of autumn.

Dion went to the fireplace, which faced the far doorway.  There was not a sound in the room; not a sound came to it just then from without.  He could scarcely believe he was in Knightsbridge.  Not even a clock was ticking on the mantelpiece above the fire, in which ship logs were burning.  The flames which came from them were of various shades of blue, like magical flames conjured up by a magician.  He looked round.  He had never seen a room like this before.  It was a room to live in, to hear strange music in; it was not a reception-room.  Not crowded with furniture it was not at all bare.  Its “note” was not austere but quite the contrary.  It was a room which quietly enticed.  Dion was not one of those men who know all about women’s dresses, and combinations of color, and china, and furniture, but he was observant; as a rule he noticed what he saw.  Fresh from South Africa, from a very hard life out of doors, he looked at this room and was almost startled by it.  The refinement of it was excessive in his eyes and reminded him of something overbred, of certain Italian greyhounds, for instance.  Strange blues and greens were dexterously combined