in the vague,
but he was not to walk in vagueness forever. Fate which, by its malign
action, had caused him to inflict a frightful injury upon the good woman
he loved still held in reserve for him new and tremendous experience. He
thought that in Welsley he had reached the ultimate depths which a man
can sound. It was not so.

Dion came to Buyukderer on a breezy blue day, a day which seemed full
of hope and elation, which was radiant with sunlight and dancing waters,
and buoyant with ardent life. Gone were those delicate dreamy influences
which sometimes float over the Bosporus even in the noontides of summer,
when the winds are still, and the long shores of Asia seem to lie
wrapped in a soft siesta, holding their secrets of the Orient closely
hidden from the eyes of Europe. Europe gazes at Asia, but Asia is
gravely indifferent to Europe; she listens only to the voices which come
to her from her own depths, and, like an Almeh reclining, is stirred
only by music unknown to the West.

As the steamer on which he traveled voyaged towards the Black Sea, Dion
paced up and down the deck and looked always at the shore of Asia. That
line of hills represented to him the unknown. If he could only lose
himself in Asia and forget! But there was nothing passionate in his
longing. It was only a gray desire born in a broken mind and a broken
nature.

Once during the voyage he thought of Robin. Did Robin know where he was,
whither he was going? Since Rosamund had utterly rejected him, strangely
his dead boy and he had at moments seemed to Dion to be near to each
other encompassed by the same thick darkness. Even once he had seemed
to see Robin groping, like one lost and vainly seeking after light. His
vagueness was broken upon sometimes by fantastic visions. But to-day
he had no consciousness at all of Robin. The veil of death which hung
between him and the child he had slain seemed to be of stone, absolutely
impenetrable. And all his visions had left him.

Palaces and villas came into sight and vanished; Yildiz upon its hill
scattered among the trees of its immense park; Dolmabaghcheh stretched
out along the water's edges, with its rose-beds before it; and its
gravely staring sentinels; Beylerbey Serai on the Asian shore, with its
marble quay and its terraced gardens, not far from Kandili and the sweet
waters of Asia. Presently the Giant's Mountain appeared staring across
the water at Buyukderer. The prow of the steamer was headed