“But, then, why?”
“Because Cynthia always does get what she wants, or needs. She has quite abnormal will-power, and will-power is the conqueror. If I’m to tell you the truth, I see only one reason for doubt, I don’t say fear, as to the result.”
“Can you tell me what it is?”
“Aristide Dumeny.”
At this moment the Judge returned to the bench. An hour later he began to sum up.
He spoke very slowly and rather monotonously, and at first Dion thought that he was going to be “let down” by this almost cruelly level finale to a dramatic, sometimes even horrible, struggle between powerful opposing forces. But presently he began to come under a new fascination, the fascination of a cool and very clear presentation of undressed facts. Led by the Judge, he reviewed again the complex life at Constantinople, he followed again Mrs. Clarke’s many steps away from the beaten paths, he penetrated again through some of the winding ways into the shadows of the unwise life. And he began to wonder a little and a little to fear for the woman who was sitting so near to him waiting for the end. He could not tell whether the Judge believed her to be innocent or guilty, but he thought he could tell that the Judge considered her indiscreet, too heedless of those conventions on which social relations are based, too determined a follower after the flitting light of her own desires. Presently the position of Beadon Clarke in the Constantinople menage was touched upon, and suddenly Dion found himself imagining how it would be to have as his wife a Mrs. Clarke. Suppose Rosamund were to develop the unconventional idiosyncrasies of a Cynthia Clarke? He realized at once that he was not a Beadon Clarke; he could never stand that sort of thing. He felt hot at the mere thought of his Rosamund making night expeditions in caiques alone with young men—such, for instance, as Hadi Bey; or listening alone at midnight in a garden pavilion isolated, shaded by trees, to the music made by a Dumeny.
Dumeny! The Judge pronounced his name.
“I come now to the respondent’s relation with the second co-respondent, Aristide Dumeny of the French Embassy in Constantinople.”
Dion leaned slightly forward and looked at Dumeny. Dumeny was sitting bolt upright, and now, as the Judge mentioned his name, he folded his arms, raised his long dark eyes, and gazed steadily at the bench. Did he know that he was the danger in the case? If he did he did not show any apprehension. His white face, typically French, with its rather long nose, slightly flattened temples, faintly cynical and ironic lips and small but obstinate chin, was almost sinister in its complete immobility.
“He’s certainly a corrupt beast,” Dion said to himself. “But as certainly he’s an interesting, clever, knowledgeable beast.”