She dismissed the carriage, paid the toll and walked on to the bridge.  As usual there was a crowd of pedestrians passing to and fro from Galata to Stamboul and from Stamboul to Galata.  She mingled with it, went up to Dion and stood near him without uttering a word.  For perhaps two minutes she stood thus before he noticed her.  Then he turned and sent her a hard, almost defiant glance before he recognized who his companion was.

“Oh, I didn’t know it was——­Why didn’t you speak?  Is it time to go?  I meant to be at the landing.”

He spoke like a man who had been a long way off, and who returned weary and almost dazed from that distance.  He looked at his watch.

“Please forgive me for putting you to the trouble of coming to find me.”

“You needn’t ever ask me to forgive you for anything.  Don’t let us bother each other with all the silly little things that worry the fools.  We’ve got beyond all that long ago.  There’s my caique.”

She made a signal with her hand.  Two Albanians below saluted her.

“Shall we go at once?  Or would you rather stay here a little longer?”

“Let us go.  I was only looking at the water.”

He turned and sent a long glance to Stamboul.

“Your city!” he said.

“I shall take you.”

For the first time that day he looked at her intimately, and his look said: 

“Why do you trouble about me?”

They went down, got into the caique, and were taken by the turmoil of the Golden Horn.  Among the innumerable caiques, the steamboats, the craft of all kinds, they went out into the strong sunshine, guarded on the one hand by the crowding, discolored houses of Galata rising to Pera, on the other hand by the wooden dwellings and the enormous mosques of Stamboul.  The voices of life pursued them over the water and they sat in silence side by side.  Dion made no social attempt to entertain his companion.  Had she not just said to him that long ago they had gone beyond all the silly little things that worry the fools?  In the midst of the fierce activity and the riot of noise which marks out the Golden Horn from all other water-ways, they traveled towards emptiness, silence, the desolation on the hill near the sacred place of the Turks, where each new Sultan is girded with the sword of Osman, and where the standard-bearer of the Prophet sleeps in the tomb that was seen in a vision.

In the strong heat of noon they left the caique and walked slowly towards the hill which rises to the north-east, where the dark towers of the cypresses watch over the innumerable graves.  Mrs. Clarke had put up a sun umbrella.  Her face was protected by a thin white veil.  She wore a linen dress, pale gray in color, with white lines on it, and long loose gloves of suede.  She looked extraordinarily thin.  Her unshining, curiously colorless hair was partly covered by a small hat of burnt straw, turned sharply and decisively up on the left side and