f forty-five degrees and Tufik bowed us
out of the car. He stood by visibly glowing with happiness, while Tish
got a cobblestone and placed it under a wheel, and Aggie and I took in
our surroundings.

We were in an alley ten feet wide and paved indiscriminately with stones
and tin cans, babies and broken bottles. Before us was a two-story brick
house with broken windows and a high, railed wooden stoop, minus two
steps. Under the stoop was a door leading into a cellar, and from this
cellar was coming a curious stamping noise and a sound as of an animal
in its death throes.

Aggie caught my arm. "What's that?" she quavered.

I had no time to reply. Tufik had thrown open the door and stood aside
to let us pass.

"They dance," he said gravely. "There is always much dancing before a
wedding. The music one hears is of Damascus and he who dances now is a
sheik among his people."

Reassured as to the sounds, we stepped down into the basement. That was
at four o'clock in the afternoon.

I have never been fairly clear as to what followed and Aggie's memory
is a complete blank. I remember a long, boarded-in and floored cellar,
smelling very damp and lighted by flaring gas jets. The center was empty
save for a swarthy gentleman in a fez and his shirt-sleeves, wearing a
pair of green suspenders and dancing alone--a curious stamping dance
that kept time to a drum. I remember the musicians too--three of them
in a corner: one playing on a sort of pipes-of-Pan affair of reeds,
one on a long-necked instrument that looked like a guitar with zither
ambitions, and a drummer who chanted with his eyes shut and kept time
to his chants by beating on a sheepskin tied over the mouth of a brass
bowl. Round three sides of the room were long, oil cloth-covered tables;
and in preparation for the ceremony a little Syrian girl was sweeping up
peanut shells, ashes, and beer bottles, with absolute disregard of the
guests.

All round the wall, behind rows of beer bottles, dishes of bananas,
and plates of raw liver, were men,--soft-eyed Syrians with white
teeth gleaming and black hair plastered close and celluloid
collars,--gentle-voiced, urbane-mannered Orientals, who came up gravely
one by one and shook hands with us; who pressed on us beer and peanuts
and raw liver.

Aggie, speaking between sneezes and over the chanting and the drum, bent
toward me. "It's a breath of the Orient!" she said ecstatically. "Oh,
Lizzie, do you think I could buy th