night in Algeria. Take also a hill, and on the hill a garden....”

“The Hotel St. George, Mustapha Supérieur, Algiers——”

“Ah, don’t forget the American Bar!”

“And the Benares bowls——”

“And calorifères too hot or too cold——”

“And Arab carpets from Victoria Street——”

“And Americans with low heels——”

“And a passion for ‘mailing postals——’”

”

“Not to mention veal every day——”

“And a Soirée de Gala every Saturday——”

“And the best-dressed women——”

“Of Tunbridge Wells.{48}”

{48}

“But take instead some red and purple flowers against a yellow wall, some oranges, a tangerine or two, three gazelles on a tennis-court, poppies tall as choir-boys, the cactus, the palm, and the pyramid cypress-tree. And watch, my friend, two shadows that walk in the wicked shadow of the pyramid cypress, that stands in the garden like a dark torch keeping watch over disillusion. It is night, or have I already told you that? Ah me, ah me, now will she who walks there ever forsake her love, will she ever be disloyal to her vows, that were made with so much pomp and circumstance in the Guards’ Chapel at Westminster before a congregation notable for the absence of all her husband’s relations? Why, her heart is confident, her heart is fragrant with the honey of that moon’s passage, and she knows what she knows. And yet, and here is a most pitiful thing, there must be something in her, some fatal abandon, that sets men doubting, for he who walked with her in the wicked shadow of the pyramid cypress wore the silence of the destroyer, so that her heart cried that he was misnamed, for the mortal 

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