I’m the British Ambassadress, and never bothers me—­I thought at first the mosque was quite empty.  I sat down close to the door.  After I had been there two or three minutes I felt there was some one else in the mosque.  I looked round.  Before the Mihrab there was a man.  It was your husband.  He was kneeling on the matting, but—­but he wasn’t praying.  When I knew, when I heard what he was doing, I went away at once.  I couldn’t—­I felt that——­”

Again she paused.  In the pause she heard the gale tearing at the windows.  She looked at the woman in the sister’s dress.  Rosamund was sitting motionless, and was now looking down.  Lady Ingleton positively hated the sister’s dress at that moment.  She thought of it as a sort of armor in which her visitor was encased, an armor which rendered her invulnerable.  What shaft could penetrate that smooth black and white, that flowing panoply, and reach the heart Lady Ingleton desired to pierce?  Suddenly Lady Ingleton felt cruel.  She longed to tear away from Rosamund all the religion which seemed to be protecting her; she longed to see her naked as Dion Leith was naked.

“I didn’t care to look upon a man in hell,” she said, in a voice which had become almost brutal, a voice which Sir Carey would scarcely have recognized if he had heard it.

Rosamund said nothing, and, after a moment, Lady Ingleton continued: 

“With us on the yacht was one of my husband’s secretaries of Embassy, Cyril Vane, who had just become engaged to be married.  He is married now.  In his cabin on the yacht he had a photograph of the girl.  One night he was walking up and down on deck with your husband, and your husband—­I’d just told him about Vane’s engagement—­congratulated him.  Vane invited Mr. Leith into the cabin and showed him the photograph.  Vane told me afterwards that he should never forget the look on your husband’s face as he took the photograph and gazed at it.  When he put it down he said to Vane, ’I hope you may be happy.  She looks very kind, and very good, too; but there’s no cruelty on earth like the cruelty of a good woman.’” (Did the sister’s dress rustle faintly?) “Vane—­he’s only a boy—­was very angry for a moment, though he’s usually imperturbable.  I don’t know exactly what he said, but I believe he made a rather strong protest about knowing his fiancee’s character au fond.  Anyhow, your husband took hold of his arm and said to him, ’Don’t love very much and you may be happy.  That’s the only chance for a man—­not to love the woman very much.’  Vane came to me and told me.  I remember it was late at night and my husband was there.  When Vane was leaving us Carey said to him, ’Forget the advice that poor fellow gave you.  Love her as much as you can, my boy.  Dion Leith speaks out of the bitterness that is destroying him.  But very few men can love as he can, and very few men have been punished by their love as he has been punished by his.  His sorrow is altogether exceptional, and has made him lose the power of moral vision.  His soul has been poisoned at the source.’  My husband was right.”