He left the window, sat down again at the table, and wrote quickly.
“I have your letter. Will you meet me to-morrow at Eyub, in the cemetery on the hill? I will be near the Tekkeh of the dancing Dervishes. I will be there before noon, and will wait all day.
“DION”
When he began to write he knew that he could not make his confession to Rosamund within the four walls of his sordid and dingy room. Her power to understand would surely be taken from her there. Might it not be released under the sky of morning, within sight of those minarets which he had sometimes feared, but which he had always secretly, in some obscure way, loved even in the most abominable moments of his abominable life, as he had always secretly, beneath all the hard bitterness of his stricken heart, loved Rosamund? From them came the voice which would not be gainsaid, the voice which whispered, “In the East thou shalt find me if thou hast not found me in the West.” Might not that voice help him when he spoke to Rosamund, help her to understand him, help her perhaps even to——
But there he stopped. He dared not contemplate the possibility of her being able to accept the man he had become as her companion. And yet now he felt himself somehow closely akin to the former Dion, flesh of that man’s flesh, bone of his bone. It was as if his sin fell from him when he so utterly repented of it.
Slowly he put the note he had written into an envelope, sealed it and wrote the address—“Mrs. Dion Leith, Hotel de Byzance.” He blotted it. Then he fetched his hat and stick. He meant to take the note himself to the Hotel de Byzance. The night might be made for sleep, but he knew he could not sleep till he had seen Rosamund. When he was out in the air, and was walking uphill towards Pera, he realized that within him, in spite of all, something of hope still lingered. Rosamund’s letter to him had wrought already a wonderful change in his tortured life. The knowledge that he would see her again, be with her alone, even if only for an hour, even if only that he might tell her what would alienate her from him forever, thrilled through him, seemed even to shed a fierce strength and alertness through his body. Now that he was going to see her once more he knew what the long separation from her had meant to him. He had known the living death. Within a few hours he would have at least some moments of life. They would be terrible moments, shameful—but they would take him back into life. Fiercely, passionately, he looked forward to them.
He left his letter at the hotel, giving it into the hands of a weary Albanian night porter. Then he returned to his rooms, undressed, washed in cold water, and lay down on his bed. And presently he was praying in the dark, instinctively almost as a child prays. He was praying for the impossible. For he believed that it was absolutely impossible the Rosamund could ever forgive him for what he had done, and yet he prayed that she might forgive him. And he felt as if he were praying with all his body as well as with all his soul.
In the dawn he was tired. But he did not sleep at all.
About ten o’clock he went out to take the boat to Eyub.