_February 25._ It was thought of you which led to our meeting. After
the evening meal of dried salt fish, pancakes, dates, and coffee, my
father and I wandered out to the Sok, and, as was our wont, sat down
among the people. Refusing the hasheesh water and sweetmeats which the
venders urged upon us, “to make you dream of your love joyfully,” we
listened to the story-tellers and the singers. Some one with a fine
natural voice sang presently an Arabic love-song:—
“My love, so lovely yet so cruel,
Why came you so to torture me?
Could I but know the being who
Has caused you thus to hate me!
Once I saw and gazed upon your lovely form each hour,
But now you ever shun me.
Yet still each night you come in dreams
For me to ask, Who sent you?
Your answer is, Him whom I love,
And you bid me then forget my passion.
But I reply, If it was not for love, how could the world go on?”
It was a song I had heard and loved in many lands and many dialects,
but that night it stirred me deeply, and brought to mind your image,
ever dear. I sat and dreamed of you till the farrago about me became
unbearable; and whispering a word to my father, I rose and strode away,
with a yearning truly mastering. I could have had no thought that you
were near, for when we stood far closer I was still unconscious of your
presence. But if not an intuition, I ask what could it be?
Wandering through the narrow streets without purpose or goal, I
presently saw looming above me the great hill on which stands the
Alcassaba. Climbing in the brilliant moonlight up the steep and
ill-conditioned road, and passing that jumble of buildings upon which
so many races and generations have left their impress, I strolled along
the wall to a ruined embrasure at the corner overlooking the sea. How
long I stood there leaning upon the parapet I do not know. Not till you
were close upon me was I conscious that my solitude was ended.
I heard footsteps, but was too incurious to turn and glance at the
intruders. Nay, more, when that harsh, strident, American voice
demanded, “There, isn’t that great?” I felt so irritated by both tone
and words that but for the seeming rudeness I should have moved away at
once. You spoke so low I could not hear your reply, and I wonder what
you said,—for his “great” applied to such beauty must have rasped much
more on your artistic sense than it did on mine.
“And this black fellow in the turban standing here,” continued the
strident voice, “he fits, too, like the paper on the wall, though
probably he’s a sentry taking forty winks on the sly. It makes an
American mad to see how slack things are run over here.”