ISKANDER EFFENDI. 43 



" I had heard her speak four words in good English ; 

 for there was no mistaking that English word to-morrow 

 for any guttural Arabic word. 



" It was none of my business — this woman's grief, or 

 her nationality. Had I met her in the streets of New 

 York or London, or even in Paris or Berlin, and she had 

 said, 'To-morrow — to-morrow — always to-morrow,' I would 

 probably have passed on and forgot her. 



" But to see the outline of such a face under an Arab 

 yasmak, and to hear such a voice in English accents 

 utter those words in Jerusalem by the Holy Sepulchre, 

 was another sort of matter, and I might well be aston- 

 ished. She was tall and slender — thus much the dress 

 exposed — and she moved with grace ; and while I watched 

 her swift steps, she was gone in the crowd, and I was 

 alone. 



" I hastened out into the open space before the church, 

 but in such a mass of men and women, each woman al- 

 most a fac-simile of all the others, how could I hope to 

 find her. Withal there was one of the daily battles be- 

 tween a Greek and a Latin priest going on in the court, 

 and victory long hesitated which of the two to crown, so 

 that, by the time I made my way to the little arch that 

 leads out by the ruins of the Church of St. John and the 

 Hospital of the Knights, all possibility of tracing the un- 

 known was lost, and I was left to my imaginations. 



" I sat in the afternoon on the front of my shop in the 

 bazaar, smoking and thinking — thinking, doubtless, of the 

 face I had seen in the morning and the voice I had heard, 

 for why should I not ? I was alone in the world — alone 

 in Jerusalem — nor living man or woman could claim right 

 to challenge my thinking of any beautiful woman I chose 

 to occupy myself about. 



