* * * * *

Sitting alone by the stream in the Valley of Roses Dion heard the sound of steps, and presently saw a slight, very refined-looking man in riding-breeches, with a hunting-crop in his hand, coming down to the bank.  He sat down on a rough wooden bench under a willow tree, lit a cigar and gazed into the water.  He had large, imaginative gray eyes.  There was something military and something poetic in his manner and bearing and in his whole appearance.  Almost directly from a little rustic cafe close by a Greek lad came, carrying a wooden stool.  On it he placed a steaming brass coffee pot, a cup and saucer, sugar, a stick of burning incense in a tiny vase, and a rose with a long stalk.  Then he went swiftly away, looking very intelligent.  The stranger—­obviously an Englishman—­picked up the rose, held it, smelt it, laid it down and began to sip his coffee.  Then in a very casual, easy-going way, like a man who was naturally sociable, and who enjoyed having a word with any one whom he came across, he began to speak to Dion.

When that day died Dion stood alone looking down into the stream.  He looked till he saw in it the face of night.  Broken stars quivered in the water; among them for a moment he perceived the eyes of a child, of a child who had been able to love him as a woman had not been able to love him, and to forgive him as a woman could not forgive him.

When Dion walked back to his hotel the candlelight glimmered over the dining-table at the Villa Hafiz where Mrs. Clarke sat with her three guests—­the Ambassador, Madame Davroulos, the wife of a Greek millionaire whose home was at Smyrna, and Ahmed Bey, one of the Sultan’s adjutants.

Hadi Bey had long ago passed out of her life.

That evening the Ambassador got up to go rather early.  His caique was lying against the quay.

“Come out by the garden gate, won’t you?” said Mrs. Clarke to him, and she led the way to the tangled rose garden, where sometimes she sat and read the poems of Hafiz.

Madame Davroulos was smoking a large cigar in a corner of the drawing-room and talking volubly to Ahmed Bey, who was listening as only a Turk can listen, with a smiling and immense serenity, twisting a string of amber beads in his padded fingers.

“He was there?” said Mrs. Clarke, in her quietest and most impersonal manner.

“Yes—­he was there.”

The Ambassador paused by the fountain, and stood with one foot on the marble edge of the basin, gazing down on the blue lilies whose color looked dull and almost black in the night.

“He was there.  I talked with him for quite half an hour.  He seemed glad to talk; he talked almost fiercely.”

Mrs. Clarke’s white face looked faintly surprised.

“Eventually I told him who I was, and he told his name to me, watching me narrowly to see how I should take it.  My air of complete serenity over the revelation seemed to reassure him.  I said I knew he was a friend of yours and that my wife and I would be very glad to see him at Therapia, and at the Embassy in Pera later on.  He said he would come to Therapia to-morrow.”