What was she to do?  If she went to Buyukderer she felt certain there would be a scandal.  Even if there were not, she could not now dare to risk having Jimmy out for his holidays.  Jimmy and Dion must not meet again.  She might travel in the summer, as Dion had suggested, but if she did that she would be forced to endure a solitude a deux with him untempered by any social distractions.  She could not endure that.  To be alone with his bitterness, his misery, and his monopolizing hatred of her would be unbearable.  And the problem of Jimmy’s holidays would not be solved by travel.  Unless she traveled to England!

A gleam of hope came to her as she thought of England.  Dion had fled from England.  Would he dare to go back there, to the land which had seen his tragedy, and where the woman lived who had cast him out?  Mrs. Clarke wondered, turning the thought of England over and over in her mind.

The longer she thought on the matter the more convinced she became that she had hit upon a final test, by means of which it would be possible for her to ascertain Dion’s exact mental condition.  If he was ready to follow her even to England, to show himself there as her intimate friend, if not as her lover, than the man whom she had known in London was dead indeed beyond hope of resurrection.

She resolved to find out what Dion’s feeling about England was.

Since the evening when she had told him the truth she had seen him—­he had obliged her to see him—­every day, but he had not come again to her flat.  They had met in secret, as they had been meeting for many months.  For the days when they had wandered about Stamboul together, when she had tried to play to him the part Dumeny had once played to her, were long ago over.

On the day when the thought of England occurred to Mrs. Clarke as a possible place of refuge she had promised to meet Dion late in the evening at their rooms near the Persian Khan.  She loathed going to those rooms.  They reminded her painfully of all she had felt for Dion and felt no longer.  They spoke to her of the secrecy of a passion that was dead.  She was afraid of them.  But she was still more afraid of seeing Dion in her flat.  Nevertheless, now the gleam of hope which had come to her suddenly woke up in her something of her old recklessness.  Since the servants had gone to the Villa Hafiz she had been living in the flat with Sonia, who was an excellent cook as well as a capital maid.  She resolved to ask Dion to dinner that night, and to try her fortune once more with him.  England must be horrible to him.  Then she would go to England.  And if he followed her there he would at least be punished for his persecution of her.

Already she called his determination not to break their intrigue persecution.  She had a short memory.

After a talk with Sonia she summoned a messenger and sent Dion a note, asking him to dinner that night.  He replied that he would come.  His answer ended with the words:  “We can go to the rooms later.”