straight and looked about him with eager eyes.  He felt keenly excited.  This was his very first taste of Eastern life.  Never before had he set foot in his “own place.”  Already, despite the zest shed through him by novelty, he had an odd, happy feeling of being at home.  He saw here and there houses with white facades, before which palm-trees were waving.  And in those houses he knew he could be very much at ease.  The courtyards, the steps, the tiles, a fountain, small rugs, a divan, a carved dark door, a great screen of wood hiding an inner apartment—­could he not see within?  He had never entered that house there on the left, and yet he knew it.  And this throng of Eastern men, with dark, keen, shining eyes, with heavy, slumbrous eyes, with eyes glittering with the yellow fires of greed; this throng, yellow-skinned, brown-skinned, black-skinned, with thin, expressive hands, with henna-tinted nails, with narrow, cunning wrists; this throng that talked volubly, that gesticulated, that gazed, observing without self-consciousness, summing up without pity, whose eyes took all and gave nothing—­if he stepped out of the carriage, if he forsook the borrowed comforts and the borrowed delights of Europe, if he hid himself in this throng, would he not find himself for the first time?

He was sorry when the carriage drew up before the great terrace of the hotel.  But he had not lost touch with the pageant.  He realized that, almost with a sensation of exultation, when he came down from his room between four and five o’clock, and took a seat by the railing.

“Tea, sir?”

He nodded to the German waiter.  Somewhere a band was playing melodies of Europe.  That night he would seek in the native quarter the whining and syncopated tunes of the East.

The tea was brought, and an Arab approached with papers:  the “Sphinx,” a French paper published in Cairo, and London papers, the “Times,” the “Morning Post.”  Isaacson bought two or three, vaguely.  It was but rarely he felt vague, but now, as he sipped his tea, his excitement was linked with something else, that seemed misty and nebulous, yet not free from a sort of enchantment.  By the railing, before and beneath him, a world of many of his dreams—­his nargeeleh dreams—­flowed by.  The abruptness of his decision to come—­that made half the enchantment of his coming, made a wonder of his arrival.  The boy in him was alive to-day, but with the boy there stood the dreamer.

The terrace, of course, was crowded.  People of many nations sat behind and on each side of Meyer Isaacson, walked up and down the broad flight of steps that connected the terrace with the pavement, stared, gesticulated, gossiped.  There was a clatter of china.  Girls in long veils munched cakes, and, more delicately, ate ices tinted pink, pale green, and almond colour.  Elderly ladies sat low in basket chairs, almost dehumanized by sight-seeing.  Antiquarians argued and protested, shaking their forefingers, browned