CHAPTER II
In the morning Mrs. Clarke sent a messenger to Hughes’s Hotel asking Dion to meet her at the landing-place on the right of the Galata Bridge at a quarter to eleven.
“We will go to Eyub by caique,” she wrote, “and lunch at a Turkish café I know close to the mosque.”
She drove to the bridge. When she came in sight of it she saw Dion standing on it alone, looking down on the crowded water-way. He was leaning on the railing, and his right cheek rested on the palm of his brown hand. Mrs. Clarke smiled faintly as she realized that this man who was waiting for her had evidently forgotten all about her.
She dismissed the carriage, paid the toll and walked on to the bridge. As usual there was a crowd of pedestrians passing to and fro from Galata to Stamboul and from Stamboul to Galata. She mingled with it, went up to Dion and stood near him without uttering a word. For perhaps two minutes she stood thus before he noticed her. Then he turned and sent her a hard, almost defiant glance before he recognized who his companion was.
“Oh, I didn’t know it was——Why didn’t you speak? Is it time to go? I meant to be at the landing.”
He spoke like a man who had been a long way off, and who returned weary and almost dazed from that distance. He looked at his watch.
“Please forgive me for putting you to the trouble of coming to find me.”
“You needn’t ever ask me to forgive you for anything. Don’t let us bother each other with all the silly little things that worry the fools. We’ve got beyond all that long ago. There’s my caique.”