“I met a friend from England unexpectedly to-day.”

“Did you?”

“A man called Dion Leith.”

“Dion Leith?” repeated Vane.

He looked at her earnestly.

“Now wait a moment!”

His large, cool blue eyes became meditative.

“It’s on the edge of my mind who that is, and yet I can’t remember.  I don’t know him, but I’m sure I know of him.”

“He fought in the South African War.”

Suddenly Vane leaned forward.  He was frowning.

“I’ve got it!  He fought, came back with the D.C.M., and only a few days afterwards killed his only child, a son, out shooting.  I remember the whole thing now, the inquest at which he was entirely exonerated and the rumors about his wife.  She’s a beautiful woman, they say.”

“Very beautiful.”

“She took it very badly, didn’t she?”

“What do you mean by very badly?”

“Didn’t she bear very hard on him?”

“She couldn’t endure to see him, or to have him near her.  Is that very wonderful?”

“You stand up for her then?”

“She was first and foremost a mother.”

“Do you know,” Vane said rather dryly, “you are the only woman I never hear speak against other women.  But when the whole thing was an accident?”

“We can’t always be quite fair, or quite reasonable, when a terrible shock comes to us.”

“It’s a problem, a terrible problem of the affections,” Vane said.  “Had she loved her husband?  Do you know?”

“I know that he loved her very much,” said Mrs. Clarke.  “He is here under an assumed name.”

Vane looked openly surprised and even, for a moment, rather disdainful.

“But then——­” He paused.

“Why did I give him away?”

“Well—­yes.”

“Because I wish to force him to face things fully and squarely.  It’s his only chance.”

“Won’t he be angry?”

“But I don’t mind that.”

“You’ve had a reason in telling me,” said Vane quietly.  “What is it?”

“Come up to my sitting-room.  We’ll have coffee there.”

“Willingly.  I feel your spell even when you’re weaving it for another man’s sake.”

Mrs. Clarke did not reject the compliment.  She only looked at Vane, and said: 

“Come.”

CHAPTER II

In the morning Mrs. Clarke sent a messenger to Hughes’s Hotel asking Dion to meet her at the landing-place on the right of the Galata Bridge at a quarter to eleven.

“We will go to Eyub by caique,” she wrote, “and lunch at a Turkish cafe I know close to the mosque.”

She drove to the bridge.  When she came in sight of it she saw Dion standing on it alone, looking down on the crowded water-way.  He was leaning on the railing, and his right cheek rested on the palm of his brown hand.  Mrs. Clarke smiled faintly as she realized that this man who was waiting for her had evidently forgotten all about her.