At last the carriage pulled up in front of the white archway which led through a high, blank wall into the hotel; and presently Jim found himself in a quiet courtyard, where a tinkling fountain played amongst the orange-trees. The building was erected around the four sides of this secluded yard, the rooms leading off a red-tiled balcony, supported on a series of whitewashed arches, and approached by a flight of worn stone steps.
Up to this covered balcony he was led by the genial proprietor, a man with a fierce grey moustache which belied a fat and kindly face; and a room was assigned to him, from the door of which he could look down upon the fountain and the oranges, while from the window at the opposite end he commanded a short view across a jumble of flat housetops to a group of tall dark cypress trees, where the sparrows were chattering as they gathered to roost.
The walls of the room were whitewashed and were pleasantly devoid of pictures. It might have been a chamber in an ancient palace, and as Jim sat himself down upon the wooden bench he had the feeling that he had passed from the twentieth century into some period of the far past.
For some time there had been a vague kind of discontent in his mind. It was as though his life were incomplete. He seemed to be seeking for something, the nature of which he could not define. At times he had thought that this was due to a desire for romance, a natural urge of sex; but, on the other hand, his reason told him that he had had enough of women, and that his present emancipation was in essence very largely a freedom from them.
Now, however, in the dusk of this quiet room, his heart seemed of a sudden to be at rest; and when from a distant minaret there came to his ears the evening call to prayer, a sense of inevitability, a kind of acknowledgment of Kismet, or Fate, passed over him and soothed him into a hopeful and expectant peacefulness.
He was still in this tranquil mood when the summons to the evening meal brought him down the stone steps and across the courtyard, where the ripe oranges hung from the trees, and the fountain splashed. It was with quiet, dawdling steps, too, that he strolled out, hatless, into the narrow street after the meal was finished. The night was warm and close, with the moon at full; and the pale deserted thoroughfare was hushed as though it were concealing some secret. The barred windows and shut doors of the houses seemed to hide unspoken things, and the two or three passers-by, moving like shadows near to the wall, gave the impression that they were bent upon some mysterious mission.
Here and there between the houses on either side small gardens were hidden away behind high whitewashed walls, above which the tops of the trees could be seen. The door of one of these stood open, and Jim, standing in the middle of the empty street, paused to gaze through the white archway into the shadows and sprinkled moonlight beyond.
Then, quietly into the frame of the doorway there came the figure of a woman, peering out into the street, the moon shining upon her face and upon her white hand, which held the door as though she were about to shut it for the night. On the instant, and with a leap of his heart, Jim recognized her.
“Monimé!” he cried out in amazement, running forward to her. He saw her raise her arm to her forehead and step back into the shadow: he could hear her gasp of surprise. A moment later he had taken her hand in his, and her startled eyes had met his own.