And he forgot the garden of the Villa Hafiz, the pavilion which stood on the hill looking over the sea to Asia, the grave woman who had told him, indifferently, that he could go to it when he would.
Nevertheless on the following day he found himself at the garden gate; he rang the bell; he was admitted by Osman, the placidly smiling gardener, and he ascended to the pavilion. No one was there. He stayed for three hours, and nobody came to interrupt him. Down below the wooden villa held closely the secret of its life. Once, as he gazed down on it, he wondered for a moment about Mrs. Clarke, how she passed her hours without a companion, which she was doing just then. The siren of a steamer sounded in the bay. He went into the pavilion. On one of the coffee-tables he found lying a small thin book bound in white vellum. He took it up and read the name in gold letters: “The Kasidah of Haji Abdu El-Yezdi.” It was the book he had found Beattie reading on the night when Robin was born, on the night when Bruce Evelin and Guy had discussed Mrs. Clarke’s divorce case and Mrs. Clarke. He shuddered in the warmth of the pavilion. Then resolutely he picked the book up. At the beginning, after some blank pages, there was a portrait of Sir Richard Burton. Dion looked at the strong, tragic face, with its burning expression, for a long time. Then he stretched himself on one of the divans and began to read the book.
Down below, in the villa, Mrs. Clarke was sitting in the green-and-blue room in the first floor with Lady Ingleton, and they were talking about Dion.
“He’s here now,” said Mrs. Clarke to her friend.
“Where?”
“In the garden. I haven’t seen him, but Osman tells me he has gone up to the pavilion.”
“We can stroll up there later on, and then you can introduce him if you want to.”
“No.”
Lady Ingleton did not look surprised on receiving this brusk negative.
“Shall I get Carey to see him first?” she asked, in her lazy voice. “Cyril Vane has prepared the way before him, and Carey is all sympathy and readiness to do what he can. The Greek tragedy of the situation appeals to him tremendously, and of course he has a hundredfold more tact than I have.”