a bygone age, playing my part in unwritten history; and my short English
coat and tight breeches did not suit me in the least. With a red velvet
cap on my head, loose paijamas, an embroidered vest, a long flowing silk
gown, and coloured handkerchiefs scented with attar, I would complete my
elaborate toilet, sit on a high-cushioned chair, and replace my
cigarette with a many-coiled narghileh filled with rose-water, as if in
eager expectation of a strange meeting with the beloved one.

I have no power to describe the marvellous incidents that unfolded
themselves, as the gloom of the night deepened. I felt as if in the
curious apartments of that vast edifice the fragments of a beautiful
story, which I could follow for some distance, but of which I could
never see the end, flew about in a sudden gust of the vernal breeze.
And all the same I would wander from room to room in pursuit of them the
whole night long.

Amid the eddy of these dream-fragments, amid the smell of henna and the
twanging of the guitar, amid the waves of air charged with fragrant
spray, I would catch like a flash of lightning the momentary glimpse of
a fair damsel. She it was who had saffron-coloured paijamas, white
ruddy soft feet in gold-embroidered slippers with curved toes, a close-
fitting bodice wrought with gold, a red cap, from which a golden frill
fell on her snowy brow and cheeks.

She had maddened me. In pursuit of her I wandered from room to room,
from path to path among the bewildering maze of alleys in the enchanted
dreamland of the nether world of sleep.

Sometimes in the evening, while arraying myself carefully as a prince of
the blood-royal before a large mirror, with a candle burning on either