She had indeed insisted that he must face his fate and had ruthlessly given him back his name; she had also deliberately set about to entangle him in the silken cords of a social relation.  But he knew within a couple of days of his arrival at Buyukderer that he did not fear her.  No woman perhaps ever lived who worried a man less in friendship, or who gave, without any insistence upon it, a stronger impression of loyalty, of tenacity in affection to those for whom she cared.  Although often almost delicately blunt in words, in action she was full of tact.  She was one of those rare women who absolutely understand men, and who know how to convey to men instantly the fact of their understanding.  Such women are always attractive to men.  Even if they are plain, and not otherwise specially clever, they possess for men a lure.

Mrs. Clarke had told Dion in Constantinople that she meant him to come to Buyukderer.  This was an almost insolent assertion of will-power.  But when he was there she let him alone.  On the day of his arrival there had come no message from the Villa Hafiz to his hotel.  He had, perhaps, expected one; he knew that he was relieved not to receive it.  Late in the afternoon he went for a solitary walk up the valley, avoiding the many people who poured forth from the villas and hotels to take their air, as the sun sank low behind Therapia, and the light upon the water lost in glory and gained in magic.  Gay parties embarked in caiques.  Some people drove in small victorias drawn by spirited, quick-trotting horses; others rode; others strolled up and down slowly by the edge of the sea.  A gay brightness of sociable life made Buyukderer intimately merry as evening drew on.  Instinctively Dion left the laughter and the voices behind him.

His wandering led him to the valley of roses, where he sat down by the stream, and for the first time tasted something of the simplicity and charm of Turkish country life.  It did not charm him, but in a dim way he felt it, was faintly aware of a soothing influence which touched him like a cool hand.  For a long time he stayed there, and he thought, “If I remain at Buyukderer I shall often visit this place beside the stream.”  Once he was disturbed by the noise of a cantering horse in the lane close by, but otherwise he was fortunate that day; few people came to his retreat, and none of them were foreigners.  Two or three Turks strolled by, holding their beads; and once some veiled women came, escorted by a eunuch, threw some petals of flowers upon the surface of the tinkling water, and walked on up the narrow valley, chattering in childish voices, and laughing with a twitter that was like the twitter of birds.

In the soft darkness he walked slowly back to his hotel.  And that night he slept better than he had ever slept in Pera.

On the following day there was still no message from the Villa Hafiz, and he did not see Mrs. Clarke.  He took a row boat, with a big Albanian boatman for company, and rowed out on the Bosporus till they came in sight of the Black Sea.  The wind got up; Dion stripped to his shirt and trousers, rolled his shirt sleeves up to the shoulders, and had a long pull at the oars.  He rowed till the perspiration ran down his lean body.  The boatman admired his muscles and his strength.