he was carrying. It included a curious Russian name,
the correct pronunciation of which she foresaw she must ask Myrtilla on
their next meeting. It was "The Journal of Marie Bashkirtseff."

CHAPTER VIII

A RHAPSODY OF TYRE

Sidon, the stage of the moving events so far recorded, though it makes
much of possessing a separate importance, is really a cross-river
residential suburb of Tyre, the great seaport in which all the ships of
the world come to and fro. During the day Sidon is virtually emptied of
its men-folk, and is given up to perambulators and feminine activities
generally; for the men have streamed across the ferries that bridge the
sunny, boisterous river, to the docks and offices of Tyre.

Though Tyre is not a very old city, it is not so new as to be denied a
few of those associations known as "historical." Tyre had once the
honour to be taken by Prince Rupert, and long before that its nucleus
had existed as a monk's ferry, by which travellers were rowed across the
river to the monastery and posting-house at Sidon. Sometimes of an
evening Henry and Mike would think of those far-off times as they looked
over the ferry-boat at the long lines of river lights, with their
restless heaving reflections; and sometimes they could picture to
themselves the green sloping banks of the virgin fields, and hear the
priory bell calling to them out of the darkness. But such were the
faintest of their visions; and they loved the river banks best as they
are to-day, with their Egyptian walls and swarming lights and
tangled ships.

And whoso should think that that sordid commercial city, given up to all
the prose of trade day by day, is not a poet at heart, has never seen
her strange smile at evening when the shops are shut, and the offices
empty, and the men who know her not gone home. For then across the
crowded roofs softly comes a strange sweetness, and deep down among the
gloomy wynds of deserted warehouses, still as temples, sudden fairies of
sunset dance and dazzle, and touch the grimy walls with soft hands. In
lonely back rooms, full of desks and dust, haunted lights of evening
stand like splendid apparitions; and sometimes, if you lingered at the
top of High Street, beneath the dark old church, and the moon was out
on the left of the steeple and the sunset dying on the right, dying
beyond the tangled masts and fading from the river, you would forget you
were a city clerk, and you would wonder why the world wa