CHAPTER V

On the day after the return of the “Leyla” from Mudania, Mrs. Clarke asked Dion if he would dine with her at the Villa Hafiz.  She asked him by word of mouth.  They had met on the quay.  It was morning, and Dion was about to embark in the Albanian’s boat for a row on the Bosporus when he saw Mrs. Clarke’s thin figure approaching him under a white umbrella lined with delicate green.  She was wearing smoked spectacles, which made her white face look strange and almost forbidding in the strong sunlight.

“I can’t come,” he said.

And there was a sound almost of desperation in his voice.

“I can’t.”

She said nothing, but she stood there beside him looking very inflexible.  Apparently she was waiting for an explanation of his refusal, though she did not ask for it.

“I can’t be with people.  It’s no use.  I’ve tried it.  You didn’t know—­”

“Yes, I did,” she interrupted him.

“You did know?”

He stood staring blankly at her.

“Surely I—­I tried my best.  I did my utmost to hide it.”

“You couldn’t hide it from me.”

“I must go away,” he said.

“Come to-night.  Nobody will be there.”

“It isn’t a party?”

“We shall be alone.”

“You meant to ask people?”

“I won’t.  I’ll ask nobody.  Half-past eight?”

“I’ll come,” he said.

She turned away without another word.

Just after half-past eight he rang at the door of the villa.

As he went into the hall and smelt the strong perfume of flowers he wondered that he had dared to come.  But he had been with Mrs. Clarke when she was in horrible circumstances; he had sat and watched her when she was under the knife; he had helped her to pass through a crowd of people fighting to stare at her and making hideous comments upon her.  Then why, even to-night, should he dread her eyes?  His remembrance of her tragedy made him feel that hers was the one house into which he could enter that night.

As he walked into the drawing-room he recollected walking into Mrs. Chetwinde’s drawing-room, full of interest in the woman who was in sanctuary, but who was soon to be delivered up, stripped by a man of the law’s horrible allegations, to the gaping crowd.  Now she was living peacefully among her friends, the custodian of her boy, a woman who had won through; and he was a wanderer, a childless father, the slayer of his son.

Mrs. Clarke kept him waiting for a few minutes.  He stood at the French window and listened to the fountain.  In the fall of the water there was surely an undertune.  He seemed to know that it was there and yet he could not hear it; and he felt baffled as if by a thin mystery.

Then Mrs. Clarke came in and they went at once to dinner.

During dinner they talked very little.  She spoke when the Greek butler was in the room, and Dion did his best in reply; nevertheless the conversation languished.  Although Dion had so few words to give to his hostess he felt abnormally alive.  The whole of him was like a quivering nerve.