ink of a complete emotional breakdown which she had
brought about in him at their first meeting. He remembered the hand
he had taken and had put against his forehead. There had been no
cool solace in it for the fever within him. Why, then, did he go to
Buyukderer? Certainly he did not go in hope. He was dwelling in a region
far beyond where hope can live.

But here was some one who was far away from the land that had seen his
tragedy, and who meant something in connexion with him, who intended
something which had to do with him. In England his mother had been
powerless to help him; Beattie had been powerless to help him. Canon
Wilton had tried to use his almost stern power of manly sincerity on
behalf of the soul of Dion. He and Dion had had a long interview after
the inquest on the little body of Robin was over, and he had drawn
nearer to the inmost chamber than any one else had, though Bruce Evelin,
even in his almost fierce grief for Robin, had been wonderfully kind
and understanding. But even Canon Wilton had utterly failed to be of any
real use. Perhaps he had known Rosamund too well.

Till now Mrs. Clarke was the one human being who had succeeded in making
a definite impression on Dion since Robin's death and Rosamund's fearful
reception of the news of it. He felt her will, and perhaps he felt
something else in her without telling himself that he did so: her
knowledge of a life absolutely different from the life he had hitherto
known, absolutely different, too, from the life known to, and lived by,
those who had been nearest to him and with whom he had been most closely
intimate. The old life with all its associations had cast him out. That
was his feeling. Possibly, without being aware of it, and driven by the
necessity that is within man to lay hold of something, to seek
after refuge in the blackest moments of existence, he was feebly and
instinctively feeling after an unknown life which was represented to
his imagination by the pale beauty of Mrs. Clarke. She had described
his situation as one of suspension between the heaven and the earth.
His heaven had certainly rejected him. Possibly, without knowing it, and
without any hope of future happiness or even of future peace, he faintly
descried her earth; possibly, in going to Buyukderer, he was making an
unconscious effort to gain it.

He wondered about this afterwards, but not at all in the moment of his
going. Things were not clear to him then. He was still