would alone give some colour to a memory of the Latin kingdom
of Jerusalem; and there are other examples and effects which are
less easily imagined in the West. Thus as I look down the street,
I see coming out from under an archway a woman wearing a high white
head-dress very like those we have all seen in a hundred pictures
of tournaments or hunting parties, or the Canterbury Pilgrimage
or the Court of Louis XI. She is as white as a woman of the North;
and it is not, I think, entirely fanciful to trace a certain
freedom and dignity in her movement, which is quite different
at least from the shuffling walk of the shrouded Moslem women.
She is a woman of Bethlehem, where a tradition, it is said, still claims
as a heroic heritage the blood of the Latin knights of the cross.
This is, of course, but one aspect of the city; but it is one
which may be early noted, yet one which is generally neglected.
As I have said, I had expected many things of Jerusalem,
but I had not expected this. I had expected to be disappointed
with it as a place utterly profaned and fallen below its mission.
I had expected to be awed by it; indeed I had expected to be frightened
of it, as a place dedicated and even doomed by its mission.
But I had never fancied that it would be possible to be fond of it;
as one might be fond of a little walled town among the orchards
of Normandy or the hop-fields of Kent.

And just then there happened a coincidence that was also something
like a catastrophe. I was idly watching, as it moved down
the narrow street to one of the dark doorways, the head-dress,
like a tower of white drapery, belonging to the Christian woman
from the place where Christ was born. After she had disappeared
into the darkness of the porch I continued to look vaguely
at the porch, and thought how easily it might have been a small