tay here for a time, and learn to obey that
command. Perhaps, eventually, Stamboul will help you."

"Nothing can help me," he answered.

They went down the hill by the Tekkeh of the Dancing Dervishes.

* * * * *

Mrs. Clarke did not go back to her villa at Buyukderer that day. It was
already late in the afternoon when her caique touched the wharf at the
foot of the Galata bridge.

"I shall stay another night at the hotel," she said to Dion. "Will you
drive up with me?"

He assented. When they reached the hotel he said:

"May I come in for a few minutes?"

"Of course."

When they were in the dim, rather bare room with the white walls,
between which the fierce noises from the Grande Rue found a home, he
said:

"I feel before I leave I must speak about what you did last night, the
message you gave to Vane of our Embassy. I dare say you are right
and that I ought to face things. But no one can judge for a man in my
situation, a man who's had everything cut from under him. I haven't
ended it. That proves I've got a remnant of something--you needn't call
it strength--left in me. Since you've told my name, I'll take it back.
Perhaps it was cowardly to give it up. I believe it was. Robin might
think so, if he knew. And he may know things. But I can't meet casual
people."

"I'm afraid I did what I did partly for myself," she said, taking off
her little hat and laying it, with her gloves, on a table.

"For yourself? Why?"

"I'll explain to-morrow. I shall see you before I go. Come for me at
ten, will you, and we'll drive to Stamboul. I'll tell you there."

"Please tell me now, if you're not tired after being out all day."

"I'm never tired."

"Once Mrs. Chetwinde told me that you were made of iron."

Mrs. Clarke sent him a curious keen glance of intense and almost lambent
inquiry, but he did not notice it. The strong interest that notices
things was absent from him. Would it ever be in him again?

"I suppose I have a great deal of stamina," she said casually. "Well,
sit down, and I'll try to explain."

She lit a cigarette and sat on a divan in the far corner of the large
room, between one of the windows and the door which led into the
bedroom. Dion sat down, facing her and the noise from the Grande Rue. He
wondered for a moment why she had chosen a place so close to the window.

"I had a double reason for doing what I did," she said. "One part
unselfish, the other not. I'll be very frank. I willed that y