Rosamund and Robin started up in his mind. He saw them before him as he had seen them one night in Westminster when Rosamund had been singing to Robin. Ah, she had been a cruel, a terribly cruel, wife, but she had been an ideal mother! He saw her head bent over her child, the curve of her arm round his little body. A sensation of sickness came upon him, of soul-nausea; and again he thought, “I must get away.”
The night before the day on which Jimmy was due to arrive, Mrs. Clarke was in Constantinople. She had gone there to meet Jimmy, and had started early in the morning, leaving Dion at Buyukderer. When she was gone he took the Albanian’s boat and went out on the Bosporus for a row. The man and he were both at the oars, and pulled out from the bay. When they had gone some distance—they had been rowing for perhaps ten minutes—the man asked:
“Ou allons-nous, Signore?”
“Vers Constantinople,” replied Dion.
“Bene!” replied the man.
That night Mrs. Clarke had just finished dinner when a waiter tapped at her sitting-room door.
“What is it?” she asked.
“A gentleman asks if he can see you, Madame.”
“A gentleman? Have you got his card?”
“No, Madame; he gave no card.”