second moved toward it also, till the two drew, up, not
looking at each other, the plant between them. Then she who had beckoned
spoke in a strange tongue _at_ the palm. The first woman, still looking
away, answered in the same fashion with a rush of words that rattled
like buckshot through the stiff fronds. Her tone had nothing to do with
that in which she greeted her new partner, who came up as the music
began. The one was a delicious drawl; the other had been the guttural
rasp and click of the kitchen and the bazaar. So she moved off, and, in
a little, the second woman disappeared into the crowd. Most likely it
was no more than some question of the programme or dress, but the
prompt, feline stealth and coolness of it, the lightning-quick return to
and from world-apart civilisations stuck in my memory.

So did the bloodless face of a very old Turk, fresh from some horror of
assassination in Constantinople in which he, too, had been nearly
pistolled, but, they said, he had argued quietly over the body of a late
colleague, as one to whom death was of no moment, until the hysterical
Young Turks were abashed and let him get away--to the lights and music
of this elegantly appointed hotel.

These modern 'Arabian Nights' are too hectic for quiet folk. I declined
upon a more rational Cairo--the Arab city where everything is as it was
when Maruf the Cobbler fled from Fatima-el-Orra and met the djinn in the
Adelia Musjid. The craftsmen and merchants sat on their shop-boards, a
rich mystery of darkness behind them, and the narrow gullies were
polished to shoulder-height by the mere flux of people. Shod white men,
unless they are agriculturists, touch lightly, with their hands at most,
in passing. Easterns lean and loll and squat and sidle against things as
they daunder along. When the feet are bare, the whole body thinks.
Moreover, it is unseemly to buy or to do aught and be done with it. Only
people with tight-fitting clothes that need no attention have time for
that. So we of the loose skirt and flowing trousers and slack slipper
make full and ample salutations to our friends, and redouble them toward
our ill-wishers, and if it be a question of purchase, the stuff must be
fingered and appraised with a proverb or so, and if it be a
fool-tourist who thinks that he cannot be cheated, O true believers!
draw near and witness how we shall loot him.

But I bought nothing. The city thrust more treasure upon me than I could
carry awa