it, but it is the sort of beauty that
you can't describe satisfactorily. It is like your mother's face. You
can see the beauty for yourself, but no one else can see it as you do,
for the love which is behind it.

In Odessa we began to leave Russia behind us. Odessa is all sorts of a
place. It is commercial, and not beautiful, but, as usual, our Russian
friends made us forget the town and its sights, and remember only
their sweet hospitality and friendliness.

We wished to catch the Russian steamer for Constantinople, but we were
told that the police would not permit us to leave on such short
notice. We felt that this was hard, for we had tried so consistently
to be good in Russia that I was determined to go if possible. So I
took an interpreter and drove to the police headquarters myself. To my
amazement and delight my man told me that it could all be arranged by
the payment of a few rubles. But that "few rubles" mounted up into
many before I got my passports duly vised. I discovered that our
American police are not so _very_ different from Russian police after
all, even if they _are_ Irish!

We caught the steamer--the dear, clean, lovely _Nickolai II._, with
the stewardess a Greek named Aspasia, and I persisted in calling the
steward Pericles, just to have things match.

Then we crunched our way out of the harbor through the ice into the
Black Sea, and sailed away for Constantinople.

IX

CONSTANTINOPLE

Constantinople had three different effects upon me. The first was to
make me utterly despise it for its sickening dirt; the second was when
I forgot all about the mud and garbage, and went crazy over its
picturesque streets with their steep slopes, odd turns, and bewitching
vistas, and the last was to make me dread Cairo for fear it would seem
tame in comparison, for Constantinople is enchanting. If I were a
painter I would never leave off painting its delights and spreading
its fascinations broadcast; and then I would take all the money I got
for my pictures and spend it in the bazaars, and if I regretted my
purchases I would barter them for others, because Constantinople is
the beginning of the Orient, and if you remain long you become
thoroughly metamorphosed, and you bargain, trade, exchange, and haggle
until you forget that you ever were a Christian. The hour of our
arrival in Constantinople was an accident. The steamer _Nickolai II._
was late, and as no one may land there after sunset, we were forc