“Cynthia Clarke won’t mind if I turn up before my time.”

“No.  She’s devoted to you, and you know it, and love it.”

Sir Carey smiled.  He and his wife were happy people, and he never wished to stray from his path of happiness, not even with Mrs. Clarke.  But he had been a beautiful youth, whom many women had loved, and was a remarkably handsome man, although his red hair was turning gray.  Honestly he liked to be admired by women, and to feel that his fascination for them was still intact.  And he did not actively object to the fact of his wife’s being aware of it.  For he loved her very much, and he knew that a woman does not love a man less because other women feel his power.

He appreciated Mrs. Clarke, and thought her full of intelligence, of nuances, and tres fine.  Her husband had been his right-hand man at the Embassy, but he had taken Mrs. Clarke’s part when the divorce proceedings were initiated, and had stood up for her ever since.  Like Esme Darlington he believed that she was a wild mind in an innocent body.

On the following day he rode with her towards Rumili Kavak, and presently, returning, to the four cross-roads at the mouth of the Valley of Roses.  A Turkish youth was standing there.  Mrs. Clarke spoke to him in Turkish and he replied.  She turned to the Ambassador.

“You do want a cup of coffee, don’t you?”

“If you tell me I do.”

“By the stream just beyond the lane.  And I’ll ride home.  I’ve ordered all the things you like best for dinner.  Ahmed Bey and Madame Davroulos will make a four.”

“And Delia and Cyril Vane a two!”

“You must try to control your very natural jealousy.”

“I will.”

He dismounted and gave the reins to the Turkish youth.

Sitting very erect on her black Arab horse, Mrs. Clarke watched him disappear down the lane in which Dion had heard the cantering feet of a horse as he sat alone beside the stream.

Then she rode back to Buyukderer.

CHAPTER IV

Whether Mrs. Clarke had put “The Kasidah” in a conspicuous place in the pavilion with a definite object, or whether she had been reading it and by chance had laid it down, Dion could not tell.  He believed, however, that she had intended that this book should be read by him at this crisis in his life.  She had frankly acknowledged that she wished to rouse him out of his inertia; she was a very mental woman; a book was a weapon that such a woman would be likely to employ.

At any rate, Dion felt her influence in “The Kasidah.”

The book took possession of him; it burnt him like a flame; even it made him for a short time forget.  That was incredible, yet it was the fact.

It was an antichristian book.  A woman’s love of God had made Dion in his bitterness antichristian.  It was an enormously vital book, and called to the vitality which misery had not killed within him.  There were passages in it which seemed to have been written specially for him—­passages that went into him like a sword and drew blood from out of the very depths of him.