exaggerated. The poor old man had told the simple truth, there is not
a city like it in the world. What he had called thin spires were
minarets, but the little domes on the top were clearly pure gold as he
said. There were the marble terraces he described and the pure white
palaces covered with carving and hundreds of minarets. The city was
obviously of the East and yet where there should have been crescents
on the domes of the minarets there were golden suns with rays, and
wherever one looked one saw things that obscured its origin. I walked
down to it, and, passing through a wicket gate of gold in a low wall
of white marble, I entered the city. The heather went right up to the
city's edge and beat against the marble wall whenever the wind blew
it. Lights began to twinkle from high windows of blue glass as I
walked up the white street, beautiful copper lanterns were lit up and
let down from balconies by silver chains, from doors ajar came the
sound of voices singing, and then I saw the men. Their faces were
rather grey than black, and they wore beautiful robes of coloured silk
with hems embroidered with gold and some with copper, and sometimes
pacing down the marble ways with golden baskets hung on each side of
them I saw the camels of which the old shepherd spoke.

The people had kindly faces, but, though they were evidently friendly
to strangers, I could not speak with them being ignorant of their
language, nor were the sounds of the syllables they used like any
language I had ever heard: they sounded more like grouse.

When I tried to ask them by signs whence they had come with their city
they would only point to the moon, which was bright and full and was
shining fiercely on those marble ways till the city danced in light.
And now there began appearing one by one, slipping softly out through
windows, men with stringed instruments in the balconies. They were