arvellous? They stand like a rampart round us, but not cold and
terrible, but "Like as the hills stand round about Jerusalem"--they are
guardian presences. And running up into them, high-very high, are the
valleys and hills where we shall camp. Tomorrow we shall row through
Srinagar, by the old Maharaja's palace."

V

And so began a life of sheer enchantment. We knew no one. The visitors
in Kashmir change nearly every season, and no one cared-no one asked
anything of us, and as for our shipmates, a willing affectionate service
was their gift, and no more. Looking back, I know in what a wonder-world
I was privileged to live. Vanna could talk with them all. She did not
move apart, a condescending or indifferent foreigner. Kahdra would
come to her knee and prattle to her of the great snake that lived up on
Mahadeo to devour erring boys who omitted their prayers at proper Moslem
intervals. She would sit with the baby in her lap while the mother
busied herself in the sunny bows with the mysterious dishes that smelt
so savory to a hungry man. The cuts, the bruises of the neighbourhood
all came to Vanna for treatment.

"I am graduating as a nurse," she would say laughing as she bent over
the lean arm of some weirdly wrinkled old lady, bandaging and soothing
at the same moment. Her reward would be some bit of folk-lore, some
quaintness of gratitude that I noted down in the little book I kept for
remembrance--that I do not need, for every word is in my heart.

We rowed down through the city next day--Salama rowing, and little
Kahdra lazily paddling at the bow--a wonderful city, with its narrow
ways begrimed with the dirt of ages, and its balconied houses looking
as if disease and sin had soaked into them and given them a vicious
tottering beauty, horrible and yet lovely too. We saw the swarming life
of the bazaar, the white turbans coming and going, diversified by the
rose and yellow Hindu turbans, and the caste-marks, orange and red, on
the dark brows.

I saw two women--girls--painted and tired like Jezebel, looking out of
one window carved and old, and the grey burnished doves flying about
it. They leaned indolently, like all the old, old wickedness of the East
that yet is ever young--"Flowers of Delight," with smooth black hair
braided with gold and blossoms, and covered with pale rose veils, and
gold embossed disks swinging like lamps beside the olive cheeks, the
great eyes artificially lengthened and darkened with so