renewed with the old gentleman the exciting themes of yesterday, and complacently sat silent in our own smoke.

There was nothing in the room but the divan, and a scant strip of carpet before it. But it was sunny and cheerful, and the Armenian mother looked as maternal as any other. Presently, the father summoned a slave and despatched him from the room, and a moment after the dreamy eyes were looking in at the door, and the beautiful Khadra entered.

In truth, a Houri, for upon a glittering salver she offered us the delicate conserves which only the Orientals-those honey-loving epicureans-know. As the thick transparency melted upon my tongue, I saw only her richly humid eyes, and in the rose of Persia which flavoured those sweets, I tasted but her glances.

I drew from my pocket the flower she had dropped in the church, and, unobserved of the others, pressed it to my lips. A sudden light of remembrance and recognition flashed in her eyes, but it faded instantly into their usual moonlike dreaminess.

She passed to the others, and I marked the elaborate richness of her dress, and with the extremest satisfaction. Because brilliant and glowing stuffs, gems, and flowers, and gold, are

the happy hints in nature of that supreme human beauty to which instinct directly attaches them wherever it appears. And so in the famous portraits of the world are the beautiful women arrayed The Arabian Poets are right when they clothe their heroines in magnificence, and enshrine them in garden pavilions. So, under birds of paradise melting in lustrous heavens, and under the luxuriant splendour of tropical trees, should the lover steal, enchanted, to that bower, and pressing aside opposing flowers, whose souls, by that pressure, exhale in passionate odours to his brain-look in upon his love.

"But a simple white muslin and a rose?

Ah! Traddles, they are sweet and pretty, and they suit the "dearest girl." But the Eastern Beauty is another glory than the pale sweetness of your Blonde.

Khadra went out, and returned with sherbet. I touched her finger as I took my glass; I drained it, and in my cup, her beauty was the melted pearl.

She was silent as a phantom. When she had performed the graceful services of hospitality, she sat in a corner, where the sunlight streamed all over her, and looked at me with the large eyes. Gazelle-eyes, perhaps, the poets would have called them, not so much because the eyes of gazelles are intrinsically very beautiful, but because every

association with the animal is so graceful and delicate, so wild and unattainable.

The Pacha rose, but I lingered. I was loth to lose that strain of the Eastern poem. I lingeredbut turning, slowly followed the Pacha, and that vision follows me for ever.

Artoosh for ever rides away in the Syrian moonlight-and after the bon giorno is said to the mother, and the last smile is lighting the pleasant face of the old Armenian-Khadra stands in the sunshine of Jerusalem, looking at me as if the world were a dream, while I press the faded flower to my lips, and look, but do not murmur—

"Addio Khadra."

CHAPTER XIV.

COMING AWAY.

"The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.

"The Fig-tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines, with the tender grape, give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away."

So we sang with Solomon as a soft spring day led us out of the gate of Jerusalem. Our route lay northward toward Damascus, and we paused on the stony way looking back upon the holy city, from the point whence Mary and her child, coming from Nazareth, first beheld it.

It is, perhaps, the finest view of Jerusalem. The broad foreground of olive groves narrows into the gorge of the valley of Jehoshaphat, and the gentle rise of the city from Mount Moriah to Mount Zion, reveals the mass of domes and roofs relieved by an an infrequent minaret, and based in the green groves of the Mosque of Omar. The eye clings to the aerial elegance of the dome, and tries to fashion the architectural splendours which

flashed from that very spot upon the eyes of the Nazarenes.

Then returned the same vision which had greeted our approach-the dream of gardens, terraces, and palaces, and the clustering magnificence of a metropolis. But it vanished while we gazed. The solemnity and sadness of the landscape oppressed us with their reality. For the traveller must still feel that if the Lord once especially loved the land, it has now only the bitter memory, not the radiant presence of that favour.

The day saddened as we advanced into a dreary country. It rolled around us in rocky hills. There were no houses, no people. It is a landscape without grandeur, but monotonously dreary. The camp was pitched at sun-set by the fountain at which Mary, returning to Nazareth, discovered that her son had tarried in Jerusalem.

The next day, as we came into a richer region, Mary was still the mournful figure that haunted imagination. The landscape even to-day sympathises with her, and its silence hushes and subdues your thoughts. Elected of the Lord to be the mother of the Saviour, she, the favoured of women, should yet taste little maternal joy-should feel that he would never be a boy, and, with such sorrow as no painter has painted and no poet sung, know that he must be about his Father's business,