ard of
their house beside the fountain, staring at the passers-by
through the bars of the bronze gates and at the sentries who
marched to and fro before them. This house was in one of the
principal thoroughfares of Damascus, and in front of it flowed
continually an unending, many-coloured stream of folk.

There were white-robed Arabs of the desert, mounted on their
grumbling camels; caravans of merchandise from Egypt or
elsewhere; asses laden with firewood or the grey, prickly growth
of the wild thyme for the bakers' ovens; water-sellers with their
goatskin bags and chinking brazen cups; vendors of birds or
sweetmeats; women going to the bath in closed and curtained
litters, escorted by the eunuchs of their households; great lords
riding on their Arab horses and preceded by their runners, who
thrust the crowd asunder and beat the poor with rods; beggars,
halt, maimed, and blind, beseeching alms; lepers, from whom all
shrank away, who wailed their woes aloud; stately companies of
soldiers, some mounted and some afoot; holy men, who gave
blessings and received alms; and so forth, without number and
without end.

Godwin and Wulf, seated in the shade of the painted house,
watched them gloomily. They were weary of this ever-changing
sameness, weary of the eternal glare and glitter of this
unfamiliar life, weary of the insistent cries of the mullahs on
the minarets, of the flash of the swords that would soon be red
with the blood of their own people; weary, too, of the hopeless
task to which they were sworn. Rosamund was one of this
multitude; she was the princess of Baalbec, half an Eastern by
her blood, and growing more Eastern day by day--or so they
thought in their bitterness. As well might two Saracens hope to
snatch the queen of England from her palace at Westminster, as
they to drag the princess of Baalbec out of the power of a
monarch more absolute than any king of England.

So they sat silent since they had nothing to say, and stared now
at the passing crowd, and now at the thin stream of water falling
continually into the marble basin.

Presently they heard voices at the gate, and, looking up, saw a
woman wrapped in a long cloak, talking with the guard, who with a
laugh thrust out his arm, as though to place it round her. Then a
knife flashed, and the soldier stepped back, still laughing, and
opened the wicket. The woman came in. It was Masouda. They rose
and bowed to her, but she passed before them into the