in the East, because my longing for it seemed to indicate a natural
instinct, with which she herself, possessing Eastern memories, was in
full sympathy!

I fancy there was some idea at the time that if I learnt the languages
and studied life upon the spot I might eventually find some
backstairs way into the service of the Foreign Office; but that idea,
though cherished by my elders as some excuse for the expenses of my
expedition, had never, from the first, appealed to me; and from the
moment when I got to Egypt, my first destination, it lost whatever
lustre it had had at home. For then the European ceased to interest
me, appearing somehow inappropriate and false in those surroundings.
At first I tried to overcome this feeling or perception which, while I
lived with English people, seemed unlawful. All my education until
then had tended to impose on me the cult of the thing done habitually
upon a certain plane of our society. To seek to mix on an equality
with Orientals, of whatever breeding, was one of those things which
were never done, nor even contemplated, by the kind of person who had
always been my model.

My sneaking wish to know the natives of the country intimately, like
other unconventional desires I had at times experienced, might have
remained a sneaking wish until this day, but for an accident which
freed me for a time from English supervision. My people had provided
me with introductions to several influential English residents in
Syria, among others to a family of good position in Jerusalem; and it
was understood that, on arrival in that country, I should go directly
to that family for information and advice. But, as it chanced, on
board the ship which took me to Port Said from Naples I met a man who
knew those people intimately--had been, indeed, for years an inmate of
their house--and he assumed the office of my mentor. I stayed in
Cairo, merely because he did, for some weeks, and went with him on the
same boat to Jaffa. He, for some unknown reason--I suspect
insanity--did not want me in Jerusalem just then; and, when we landed,
spun me a strange yarn of how the people I had thought to visit were
exceedingly eccentric and uncertain in their moods; and how it would
be best for me to stop in Jaffa until he sent me word that I was sure
of welcome. His story was entirely false, I found out later, a libel
on a very hospitable house. But I believed it at the time, as I did
all his statements, having no oth