A glance at her watch confirmed her worst fears, that it was not yet six o’clock. If she subtracted the two and half hours’ difference between English summer time and the time in Iran, the equation was too horrible to be contemplated. Yet there was someone outside who was already hard at work. She could hear one of the gardeners busily watering the hundreds of pots of night-scented stocks that graced the hotel garden. She could smell them too, a sweet fragrance that was missing now in so many of the gardens she knew. It gave her a good feeling to awaken to such a pleasant assault on her nostrils. It was almost enough to reconcile her to the early hour.Try as she would, she could not get back off to sleep again. It would have been nice to spend an hour drifting through that hazy middle land between sleeping and waking, but she had never felt less sleepy in her life. With a restless movement she turned on to her back and began to think about her encounter with Roger Derwent the evening before.
