He did not find the "boy" particularly affable that night, but with an accursed and persistent geniality he succeeded in delaying me for the space of a few precious moments. At a distance, I saw her disappear into a lighted doorway against which her face and figure showed only in silhouette. Again I had lost her. I could hardly pursue her into the entrances of private houses, but I noted the location and went back to my apartments in the Hotel Hermitage with the comforting thought that we were in the same town and that by rising early the next morning, and searching tirelessly till midnight, I should ultimately be able to see her.
Before sleep came to me a telegram was brought to my door.
Aunt Sarah had succeeded in becoming involved in some ludicrous difficulty with the Italian customs officials. She implored that I come at once to her rescue. How she had achieved it, was a matter of inscrutable mystery. I had always found the politeness of Italian customs officers as gracious as a benediction, but Aunt Sarah was a resourceful person. I rejoined her detestable cortège long enough to extricate her from her newest difficulty, and to discuss with her her plans for the immediate future. I found that she and her young ladies were yearning for the sepia tinted walls of Rome where, under every broken column and crumbling arch their hungry souls might drink deep draughts of improving tradition and culture. I knew that they would waste no time musing by moonlight in the shadows of the Colosseum, but that with Latin dictionaries they would decipher in the broad light of day the inscriptions on the arcs of Titus and Constantine. None the less, I encouraged their idea and enlarged upon the suitability of this time. I looked up the train schedules and wired for hotel reservations. Every moment that they hesitated I was excitedly quoting, though not aloud, lines that came back from the days of a less-mature literary taste:
"'Why dost thou stay and turn away,
Here lies the path to Rome.'"
I thought it the part of wisdom to refrain from mentioning until the actual moment of their departure that my own way lay in an opposite direction. But when I had seen them settled in their first-class compartments and the accommodating guard had reassured me by locking them in, I turned with a sigh of contentment and fled back to Monte Carlo. I had been absent only a few days, but I returned to a dusty and desolate town. Perhaps the numbers of gamblers and pleasure-seekers had not actually diminished. Perhaps they had even increased, but a day's search satisfied me that the unknown lady had gone, and for me the town was empty.
What idiosyncrasy drove me to the Holy Land, I cannot say, unless it was that after my exhausting term of cathedral inspection I felt a desire to have a look at that temple which, except for the Taj Mahal, has always appealed to me as the world's most beautiful place of worship—the Mosque of Omar.
Riding one day on a donkey around the walls of Jerusalem, I had a glimpse of Her standing on the ramparts above me by the gate of the Needle's Eye. But as I looked up, the sun was full in my eyes and I could distinguish only the lashing of her skirts in the wind, and a halo-like aura of gold about her head, which was uncovered. At that distance her face was a featureless oval. Until night came with its howling of a thousand dogs I visited the places to which guides most frequently conduct their charges. But in the Temple of The Sepulchre, on the Mount of Olives, at the Jews' Wailing Place and among the vaulted bazaars, there was only failure for my quest. For two days I hunted, and while I hunted she must have gone down to Jaffa or departed for the overland trip to Syria.