a
state of languor. In the centre of the court is a square marble well,
looking white through a rankness of wild vine, acacias in flower, weeds,
jasmines, and roses, which overgrew it, as well as the kiosk and the
whole court, climbing even the four-square arcade of Moorish arches
round the open space, under one of which I had deposited a long lantern
of crimson silk: for here no breath of the fire had come. About two in
morning I fell to sleep, a deeper peace of shadow now reigning where so
long the melancholy silver of the moon had lingered.

* * * * *

About eight in the morning I rose and made my way to the front,
intending that that should be my last night in this ruined place: for
all the night, sleeping and waking, the thing which had happened filled
my brain, growing from one depth of incredibility to a deeper, so that
at last I arrived at a sort of certainty that it could be nothing but a
drunken dream: but as I opened my eyes afresh, the deep-cutting
realisation of that impossibility smote like a pang of lightning-stroke
through my being: and I said: 'I will go again to the far Orient, and
forget': and I started out from the court, not knowing what had become
of her during the night, till, having reached the outer chamber, with a
wild start I saw her lying there at the door in the very spot where I
had flung her, asleep sideways, head on arm ... Softly, softly, I stept
over her, got out, and went running at a cautious clandestine trot. The
morning was in high _fete_, most fresh and pure, and to breathe was to
be young, and to see such a sunlight lighten even upon ruin so vast was
to be blithe. After running two hundred yards to one of the great broken
bazaar-portals, I looked back to see if I was followed: but all that
space was desolately empty. I then walked on past the arch, on which a
green oblong, once inscribed, as usual, with some text in gilt
hieroglyphs, is still discernible; and, emerging, saw the great panorama
of destruction, a few vast standing walls, with hollow Oriental windows
framing deep sky beyond, and here and there a pillar, or half-minaret,
and down within the walls of the old Seraglio still some leafless,
branchless trunks, and in Eyoub and Phanar leafless forests, and on the
northern horizon Pera with the steep upper-half of the Iani-Chircha
street still there, and on the height the European houses, and all
between blackness, stones, a rolling landscape o