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She remembered some of those with whom from time to time, she had linked herself her husband, Hadi Bey, Dumeny, Brayfield, Dion Leith. Now she was struggling, and so far in vain, to thrust Dion out of her life. If she succeeded what then? Where was stability in her existence? Her love for Jimmy was the only thing that lasted, and that often made her afraid now.
Clarke's garden pavilion, while Dumeny played to her as the moon came up to shine upon the sweet waters of Asia; or sitting under the plane trees of the Pigeon Mosque, while Hadi Bey showed her how to write an Arabic love-letter to somebody in the air, of course.
Beadon Clarke listened with the passivity of a man encompassed by melancholy, and sunk deep in the abyss of shame. Aristide Dumeny was reading a letter which he held with long-fingered, waxen-white hands very near to his narrow dark eyes.
And she turned to Sir John Addington. Dion made his way slowly out into the night, thinking of the unwise life and of the smile on the lips of Dumeny.
These dinners had frequently taken place when her husband was away from home. Monsieur Dumeny was a good musician and had sometimes sung and played to her till late in the night. Hadi Bey had sometimes been her guide in Constantinople and had given to her the freedom of his strange and mysterious city of Stamboul.
It has been given in evidence that Monsieur Dumeny frequently played and sang to the respondent till late in the night in the pavilion which has been described to you. You have seen Monsieur Dumeny in the box, and can judge for yourselves whether he was a man likely to avail himself of any advantage his undoubted talents may have given him with a highly artistic and musical woman."
When the Judge had finished his task and the jury retired to consider their verdict, it was past four o'clock. "What do you think?" Dion said in a low voice to Mrs. Chetwinde. "About the summing-up?" "Yes." "It has left things very much as I expected. Any danger there is lies in Monsieur Dumeny." "Do you know him?" "Oh, yes. I stayed with Cynthia once in Constantinople. He took us about."
With one hand she felt the little watch which Dumeny had given her. It was cold to the touch of her dry, hot hand. She felt the rough emerald set in the back of it. She and Dumeny had found that in the bazaars together, in those bazaars which Dumeny changed from Eastern shops into the Arabian Nights. Dion Leith could never do such a thing for her. But perhaps she could do it for him.
For the days when they had wandered about Stamboul together, when she had tried to play to him the part Dumeny had once played to her, were long ago over. On the day when the thought of England occurred to Mrs. Clarke as a possible place of refuge she had promised to meet Dion late in the evening at their rooms near the Persian Khan. She loathed going to those rooms.
Her husband, Councilor to the British Embassy at Constantinople, charged her with misconduct, and had cited two co-respondents, Hadi Bey, a Turkish officer, and Aristide Dumeny, a French diplomat, both apparently men of intellect and of highly cultivated tastes, and both slightly younger than Mrs. Clarke.
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