“Yes.  In London I used to think you had a punished look and even a haunted look.  Wasn’t that ridiculous?  I didn’t know then what it meant to be punished, or to be haunted.  I hadn’t enough imagination to know, not nearly enough.  But some one or something’s seen to it that I shall know all about punishment and haunting.  So I shall never be absurd about you again.”

After a pause she said: 

“I wonder why you thought that about me?”

“I don’t know.  It just came into my head.”

“Well, sit down and let us have our tea.”

Dion sat down mechanically, and Mrs. Clarke poured out the tea.

“I wish it was Buyukderer,” she said.

“Oh, I like the uproar.”

“No, you don’t—­you don’t.  Pera is spurious, and all its voices are spurious voices.  To-morrow morning, before I go back, you and I will go to Eyub.”

“To the dust and the silence and the cypresses—­O God!” said Dion.

He got up from his chair.  He was beginning to tremble.  Was it coming upon him at last then, the utter breakdown which through all these months he had—­somehow—­kept at a distance?  Determined not to shake, he exerted his will violently, till he felt as if he were with dreadful difficulty holding, keeping together, a multitude of living, struggling things, which were trying to get away out of his grasp.  And these living things were the multitudinous parts of the whole which was himself.

All that now was had been foreshadowed.  There had been writing on the wall.

“I am grateful to you for several things.  I’m not going to give you the list now.  Some day, perhaps, I shall tell you what they are . . . among the cypresses of Eyub.”

She had said that to him in London, and her voice had been fatalistic as she spoke; and in the street that same day, on his way home, the voice of the boy crying the last horror had sounded to him like a voice from the sea, a strange and sad cry lifted up between Europe and Asia.  And now——­

“How did you know?” he said.  “How did you know that we should be here together some day?”

“Sit down.  You must sit down.”

She put her languid and imperative hand on his wrist, and he sat down.  He took her hand and put it against his forehead for a moment.  But that was no use.  For her hand seemed to add fever to his fever.

“I have seen you standing amongst graves in the shadow of cypress trees,” he said.  “In England I saw you like that.  But—­how did you know?”

“Drink your tea.  Don’t hurry.  We’ve got such a long time.”

“I have.  I have all the days and nights—­every hour of them—­at my own disposal.  I’m the freest man on earth, I suppose.  No work, no ties.”

“You’ve given up everything?”

“Oh, of course.  That is, the things that were still left to me to give up.  They didn’t mean much.”

“Eat something,” she said, in a casual voice, pushing a plate of delicious little cakes towards him.