f your husband. He was absolutely reserved with me. He
always has been. You mustn't think he has ever given me the least bit
of confidence. He never has. I am quite sure he never would. We are only
acquaintances. But I want to be a friend to him now. He hasn't a friend,
not one, out there. My husband, I think, feels rather as I do about him,
in so far as a man can feel in our sort of way. He would gladly be more
intimate with your husband. But your husband doesn't make friends. He's
beyond anything of that kind. He tried, on the yacht and at Brusa. He
did his utmost. But he was held back by his misery. I must tell you
(it's very uninteresting)"--her voice softened here, and her face
slightly changed, became gentler, more intensely feminine--"that my
husband and I are very happy together. We always have been; we always
shall be; we can't help it. Being with us your husband had to--to
contemplate our happiness. It--I suppose it reminded him----"

She stopped; she could not bring herself to say it. Again her eyes
rested upon "Wedded," and, in spite of her long conviction of its
essential banality--she classed it with "The Soul's Awakening,"
"Harmony," and all the things she was farthest away from--she felt what
it stood for painfully, almost mysteriously.

"One day," she resumed, speaking more slowly, and trying to banish
emotion from her voice, "I went out from the hotel where we stayed at
Brusa, quite alone. There's a mosque at Brusa called Jeshil Jami,
the Green Mosque. It stands above the valley. It is one of the most
beautiful things I know, and quite the most beautiful Osmanli building.
I like to go there alone. Very often there is no one in the mosque.
Well, I went there that day. When I went in--the guardian was on the
terrace; he knows me and that 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