With the last sentence she transported Dion, as on a magic carpet, to the unwise life. Her husky voice changed a little; her face changed a little too; the one became slower and more drowsy; the other less haggard and fixed in its expression of distress. This woman had her hours of happiness, perhaps even of exultation. For a moment Dion envisaged another woman in her. And when he had bidden her good-by, and had received the tremendous farewells of Jimmy, he realized that she had made upon him an impression which, though soft, was certainly deep. He thought of how a cushion looks when it lies on a sofa in an empty room, indented by the small head of a woman who has been thinking, thinking alone. For a moment he was out of shape, and Mrs. Clarke had made him so.
In the big hall, as he passed out, he saw Lord Brayfield standing in front of the bureau speaking to the hall porter.
“Some day, perhaps, I shall tell you what they are, in a caique on the sweet waters of Asia or among the cypresses of Eyub.”
Dion smiled as he recalled Mrs. Clarke’s words, which had been spoken fatalistically. Then his face became very grave.
Suddenly there dawned upon him, like a vision in the London street, one of the vast Turkish cemeteries, dusty, forlorn, disordered, yet full of a melancholy touched by romance; and among the thousands of graves, through the dark thickets of cypresses, he was walking with Mrs. Clarke, who looked exactly like Echo.
A newsboy at the corner was crying his latest horror—a woman found stabbed in Hyde Park. But to Dion his raucous and stunted voice sounded like a voice from the sea, a strange and sad cry lifted up between Europe and Asia.