nner most of them trooped out again, to dance with
Zionist ladies at an institute affair. But he and I stayed, and
talked until midnight. Before I left, the key of Palestine and
Syria was in my hands.

"You seem interested," he said, coming with me to the door. "If
you don't mind rough spots now and then, I'll try to show you a
few things at first hand."

Chapter Two

"No objection; only a stipulation."

The showmanship began much sooner than I hoped. The following
day was Sunday, and I had an invitation to a sort of semi-public
tea given by the American Colony after their afternoon religious
service.

They received their guests in a huge, well-furnished room on the
upper floor of a stone house built around a courtyard filled with
flowers. I think they were a little proud of the number of
fierce-looking Arabs, who had traveled long distances in order to
be present. Ten Arab chieftains in full costume, with fifteen or
twenty of their followers, all there at great expense of trouble,
time and money, for friends sake, were, after all, something to
feel a bit chesty about. Every member of the Colony seemed able
to talk Arabic like a native and, as they used to say in the up-
state papers, a good time was being had by all. The Near East
adores ice-cream, and there was lots of it.

Two of the Arab chiefs were Christians; the rest were not. The
peace and war record of the Colony was what had brought them all
there. Hardly an Arab in the country was not the Colony's debtor
for disinterested help, direct or indirect, at some time in some
way. The American Colony was the one place in the country where
a man of any creed could go and be sure that whatever he might
say would not be used against him. So they were talking their
heads off. Hot air and Arab politics have quite a lot in common.
But there was a broad desert-breath about it all. It wasn't like
the little gusty yaps you hear in the city coffee-shops. A lot
of the talk was foolish, but it was all magnificent.

There was one sheikh named Mustapha ben Nasir dressed in a blue
serge suit and patent-leather boots, with nothing to show his
nationality except a striped silk head-dress with the camel-hair
band around the forehead. He was a handsome fellow, with a black
beard trimmed to a point, and perfect manners, polished no doubt
in a dozen countries, but still Eastern in slow, deferential
dignity. He could talk good French. I fell in con