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304 BY DESERT WAYS TO BAGHDAD
tossing sleeper may be half conscious of your charm,
the weary toiler at the end of a long day may
momentarily bless your soothing light, and in so far
as they take hold of you they make themselves akin
with us out there. But you are not a part of them,
as you are a part of us; you do not enter into the
very heart of their existence and carry their minds
up, night after night, to the realms where you live
serene and calm, making us forget the saddle rubs,
the parching thirst, the driven sand, the fire that
would not light, the kettle that would not boil—all
the little near things, the things which matter so much
in the day, and which you remind us do not matter at
night. But here they matter so much more at night,
all shut up with us inside these confining walls—inside
these muslin curtains. The darkness and the enclosed
space make them assume exaggerated dimensions ;
all the little trivialities in the room accentuate their
importance. We see them cropping up again and again
in that blue flower on the wall paper, or running round
and round the red coils on the dado. We raise
our eyes to heaven and encounter the fixed, inane
smile of a painted lady with a wand, seated in a
wreath of flowers. We shut our eyes, determined
to forget her, but a terrible fascination makes us
peep again and again, and always that same inane
smile ; and when at last the kindly shades of night
hide it altogether in darkness, we are still conscious
of her only, smiling away there, looking at us
while we cannot see her. And all the time out
side the steadfast moon and the stars eternally
twinkling are telling the same tale that they told out
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