"
Owen followed Beclere through a courtyard, where a fountain sang in
dreamy heat and shade, bringing a little sensation of coolness into
the closed room, which did not strike him as being particularly
Moorish, notwithstanding the engraved brass lamps hanging from the
ceiling, and the Oriental carpet on the floor, and the screen inlaid
with mother-of-pearl. Owen did not know whether linen sheets were a
European convention, and could be admitted into an Eastern
dwelling-house, but he was not one of those who thought everything
should be in keeping. He liked incongruities, being an inveterate
romancist and only a bedouin by caprice. One appreciates sheets after
months of pilgrimage, and one appreciates a good meal after having
eaten nothing for a long while better than sand-goose roasted at the
camp fire. More than the pleasure of the table was the pleasure of
conversation with one speaking in his native language. Beclere's mind
interested him; it was so steady, it looked towards one point always.
That was his impression when he left his host after a talk lasting
till midnight; and, thinking of Beclere and his long journey to him,
he sat by his window watching stars of extraordinary brilliancy, and
breathing a fragrance rising from the tropical garden beneath him--a
fragrance which he recognised as that of roses; and this set him
thinking that it was the East that first cultivated roses; and amid
many memories of Persia and her poets, he threw himself into bed,
longing for sleep, for a darkness which, in a few hours, would pass
into a delicious consciousness of a garden under exquisite skies.
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