through the room, in the carpet, the curtains, the blinds, the stuffs which covered the chairs, sofas, divans, cushions—­blues and greens innumerable.  He had never before seen so many differing shades of the two colors; he had not known that so many shades existed.  In the china these colors were repeated.  The door by which he had come in was of thick glass in a frame of deep blue wood and, by means of a mysterious light in the hall, was made mistily blue.  All along the windows, lilies were growing, or seemed to be growing, in earth closely covered with green moss.  There were dwarf trees, like minute yew trees, in green and blue china pots.

And always the ship logs in the fire gave out the magical blue flames.

Certainly the general effect of the room was not only luxuriously comfortable, but also strangely beautiful, though there was nothing in it which a lover of antiques would have given his eyes for.  To Dion, fresh from South Africa, the room looked too comfortable, too ingeniously beautiful.  It struck him as ultra modern, ahead of anything he had ever yet seen, and almost as evil.  But certainly it enticed.

He heard the distant sound of a woman’s dress and saw Mrs. Clarke coming slowly in from the room beyond (another blue and green room perhaps), and he thought of Brayfield dying.  He thrust a hand into the breast-pocket of his coat and brought out the dead man’s letter.

Mrs. Clarke came up to the fire and greeted him.  She did not look a moment older than when he had seen her last at Claridge’s, or indeed than when he had first seen her standing under the statue of Echo in Mrs. Chetwinde’s drawing-room.  The same feverish refinement still was with her, belonged to her; she looked as before, wasted as if by some obscure disease, haunted, almost distressed, and yet absolutely self-controlled, mistress of herself and unconscious of critical observation.  Not even for a moment, seeing her thus again after a long interval of time, did Dion hesitate about her beauty.  Undoubtedly she had beauty.  The shape of her head was lovely, and her profile was like a delicate vision seen in water.  The husky sound of her voice in her first words to him took him back to the Divorce Court.

“You haven’t changed,” she said, staring intently at him in her oddly impersonal way, which appraised and yet held something of inwardness.

“But people say I have changed very much.”

“People?”

“Well—­my people.”

“I don’t call natural development change.  I saw in you very plainly when we first met what you are now.  You have got there.  That’s all.”

Her lips were very pale.  How strangely unshining her hair was.

“Yes, she looked punished!” he thought.  “It’s that look of punishment which sets her quite apart from all other women.”

She glanced at the letter he was holding and sat down on a very broad green divan.  There were many cushions upon it; she did not heap them behind her, but sat quite upright.  She did not ask him to sit down.  He would do as he liked.  Absurd formalities of any kind did not enter into her scheme of life.