of a thimble, and smoked as many cigarettes, their
burned stubs locating his seat under the cafe awning
as clearly as peanut-shells mark a boy's at the circus.
I, of course, paid for both.

So absorbed was I in my work--the mosque never
was so beautiful as on that day--I gave no thought
to the fact that in my eagerness to hide my canvas
from the prying sun I had really backed myself into
a small wooden gate, its lintel level with the sidewalk
--a dry, dusty, sun-blistered gate, without lock or
hasp on the outside, and evidently long closed. Even
then I would not have noticed it, had not my ears
caught the sound of a voice--two voices, in fact--low,
gurgling voices--as if a fountain had just been
turned on, spattering the leaves about it. Then my
eye lighted, not only on the gate, but upon a seam or
split in the wood, half-way up its height, showing
where a panel was sometimes pushed back, perhaps
for surer identification, before the inside wooden
beam would be loosened.

So potent was the spell of the mosque's witchery
that the next instant I should have forgotten both
door and panel had not Joe touched the toe of my boot
with his own--he was sitting close to me--and in
explanation lifted his eyebrow a hair's breadth, his
eyes fixed on the slowly sliding panel--sliding noiselessly,
an inch at a time. Only then did my mind act.