rtieth door, for
therein is that which shall separate us forever."

For a moment the cafe faded from Ryder's eyes. He was in the gloom
of a garden, a shadowy darkness just touched by a crescent moon, and
beside him in the shrubbery a dark-shrouded form, shaking its
shawled head at him in denial, and whispering, lightly but
tremblingly. "It is a forbidden door ... forbidden as that
fortieth.... There are thirty and nine doors in your life, monsieur,
that you may open, but this is the forbidden...."

He had meant to look up that tale. And now chance was reminding him
of it again. A superstitious man--Ryder's great grandfather,
perhaps, would have felt it an omen of warning, and a devout
man--Ryder's grandfather, perhaps--would have taken it for a sign
from Heaven to divert his steps. Ryder reflected upon coincidence.

"When I saw her weeping," Khazib was intoning, and now Ryder
attended, his scanty knowledge of the vernacular straining and
overleaping the blanks, "Prince Azib said to himself, 'By Allah, I
will never open that fortieth door, never, and in no wise!'"

"A wise bird," thought Ryder to himself, drawing on his cigarette.

"And I bade her farewell," continued the voice slipping into the
first person. "Thereupon all departed, flying like birds, leaving me
alone in the palace. When evening drew near, I opened the door of
the first chamber and found myself in a place like one of the
pleasances of Paradise. It was a garden with trees of freshest
green and ripe fruits of yellow sheen. And I walked among the trees
and I smelt the breath of the flowers and heard the birds sing their
praise to Allah, the One, the Almighty."

"_Allhamdollillah_," murmured Ryder's neighbors reverently.

"And I looked upon the apple, whose hue is parcel red and parcel
yellow ... and I looked upon the quince whose fragrance putteth to
shame musk and ambergris ... and upon the pear whose taste
surpasseth sherbet and sugar, and the apricot, whose beauty striketh
the eye as she were a polished ruby....

"On the morrow I opened the second door and found myself in a
spacious plain set with tall date palms and watered by a running
stream whose banks were shrubbed with rose and jasmine, while privet
and eglantine, oxe-eye, violet and lily, narcissus, origane and the
winter gilliflower carpeted the borders; and the breath of the
breeze swept over those sweet-smelling growths...."

How inadequate, Ryder realized, had been the description