Should he not reply to Rosamund’s letter?  If she had heard rumors about his life would not his silence convey to her the fact that they were true?  He had perhaps only to do nothing and Rosamund would understand and—­would leave Constantinople.

The blackness which shrouded Stamboul suddenly seemed to him to become more solid, impregnable.  He felt that his own life would be drowned in blackness if Rosamund went away.  And abruptly he knew that he must see her.  Whatever the cost, whatever the shame and bitterness, he must see her at once.  He would tell her, or try to tell her, what he had been through, what he had suffered, why he had done what he had done.  Possibly she would be able to understand.  If only he could find the words that would give her the inner truth perhaps they might reach her heart.  Something intense told him that he must try to make her understand how he had loved her, through all his hideous attempts to slay his love of her.  Could a woman understand such a thing?  Desperately he wondered.  Might not his terrible sincerity perhaps overwhelm her doubts?

He left the window, sat down again at the table, and wrote quickly.

“I have your letter.  Will you meet me to-morrow at Eyub, in the cemetery on the hill?  I will be near the Tekkeh of the dancing Dervishes.  I will be there before noon, and will wait all day.

“DION”

When he began to write he knew that he could not make his confession to Rosamund within the four walls of his sordid and dingy room.  Her power to understand would surely be taken from her there.  Might it not be released under the sky of morning, within sight of those minarets which he had sometimes feared, but which he had always secretly, in some obscure way, loved even in the most abominable moments of his abominable life, as he had always secretly, beneath all the hard bitterness of his stricken heart, loved Rosamund?  From them came the voice which would not be gainsaid, the voice which whispered, “In the East thou shalt find me if thou hast not found me in the West.”  Might not that voice help him when he spoke to Rosamund, help her to understand him, help her perhaps even to——­

But there he stopped.  He dared not contemplate the possibility of her being able to accept the man he had become as her companion.  And yet now he felt himself somehow closely akin to the former Dion, flesh of that man’s flesh, bone of his bone.  It was as if his sin fell from him when he so utterly repented of it.

Slowly he put the note he had written into an envelope, sealed it and wrote the address—­“Mrs. Dion Leith, Hotel de Byzance.”  He blotted it.  Then he fetched his hat and stick.  He meant to take the note himself to the Hotel de Byzance.  The night might be made for sleep, but he knew he could not sleep till he had seen Rosamund.  When he was out in the air, and was walking uphill towards Pera, he realized that within him, in spite of all,