Suddenly his body began to shake and his arms jerked convulsively.  Instinctively, but quite quietly, Mrs. Clarke put out her hand as if she were going to lay hold of his right arm.

“No—­don’t!” he said.  “Yesterday your hand made me worse.”

She withdrew her hand.  Her face did not change.  She seemed wholly unconscious of any rudeness on his part.

“Let’s move—­let’s walk!” he said.

He sprang up.  When he was on his feet he regained control of his body.

“I don’t know what’s the matter with me,” he said.  “I’m not ill.”

“My friend, it will have to come,” she said, getting up too.

“What?”

But she did not reply.

“I’ve never been like this till now,” he added vaguely.

She knew why, but she did not tell him.  She was a woman who knew how to wait.

They wandered away through that cemetery above the Golden Horn, among the cypresses and the leaning and fallen tombstones.  Now and then they saw veiled women pausing beside the graves with flowers in their hands, or fading among the cypress trunks into sunlit spaces beyond.  Now and then they saw a man praying.  Once they came to a tomb where children were sitting in a circle chanting the Koran with a sound like the sound of bees.

Before they went down to the Turkish cafe, which is close to the holy mosque, they stood for a long while together on the hillside, looking at distant Stamboul.  The cupolas of the many mosques and the tall and speary minarets gave their Eastern message—­that message which, even to Protestant men from the lands of the West, is as the thrilling sound of a still, small voice.  And the voice will not be gainsaid; it whispers, “In the East thou shalt find me if thou hast not found me in the West.”

“Why do you care for Stamboul so much?” Dion asked his companion.  “I think you are utterly without religion.  I may be wrong, but I think you are.  And Stamboul is full of calls to prayer and of places for men to worship in.”

“Oh, there is something,” she answered.  “There is the Unknown God.”

“The Unknown God?” he repeated, with a sort of still bitterness.

“And His city is Stamboul—­for me.  When the muezzin calls I bow myself in ignorance.  What He is, I don’t know.  All I know is that men cannot explain Him to me, or teach me anything about Him.  But Stamboul has lures for me.  It is not only the city of many prayers, it is also the city of many forgetfulnesses.  The old sages said, ’Eat not thy heart nor mourn the buried Past.’  Stay here for a time, and learn to obey that command.  Perhaps, eventually, Stamboul will help you.”

“Nothing can help me,” he answered.

They went down the hill by the Tekkeh of the Dancing Dervishes.

* * * * *

Mrs. Clarke did not go back to her villa at Buyukderer that day.  It was already late in the afternoon when her caique touched the wharf at the foot of the Galata bridge.