stones; more of it is paved with clear, green water, set oblong between two bands of turf and two rows of tall poplars. This great pool is longer than it is wide, but it is wide enough to hold a picture of the arcaded tea-house and of the slim bordering tree-trunks. The water of the pool runs away through a little stone channel at the farther end, pouring into a smaller pool on a lower level. This is where roses and cucumbers keep one another company under apricot-trees. Beyond is an open stable of boulders. Horses stamp and neigh there while their riders sip glass after glass of tea. You should see the magnificent saddle-cloths, the saddles with a high pommel and a strapped leather cushion, the bridles of bright and jingling things. And the cruel bits! And the shovel stirrups! And the clouds of flies! But the pool-that is the place. That is where rugs make a frame for the still water, when shadows grow long in summer. That is where, in the warm dusk, through whole nights of Ramazan, candles flicker in small glass globes or white accordion lanterns hang, writing fanciful things on the dark mirror below. That is where turbans and felt caps bob most together, and where talk goes forward that I would give-well, not quite the world to hear, since the world does not happen to be mine. What tales must go about that quiet pool-of Assad, of Habib's sudden journey to Kazvin, of Fat'h Ali's minx of a wife, of the governor and his grain, of the highwayman Abbas and that affair with the Swede! What miracles must be recorded of afrit and of jinn! What stories told of the mad firengi! What lies believed of Russian or Englishman, of German or Turk! But they who believe them would never believe anything so strange as that in the land of a certain foreigner who sometimes moons along the river there is no such thing as a tea-house or a garden with rooms of poplar-trees or a pool where rich and poor may sit side by side on rugs in the cool of the day and sip the amber of con tent. I smile when I remember how in that astonishing land the inhabitants, lacking park benches, are driven to sit in hotel lobbies and the waiting-rooms of railway stations. The Latin and the Teuton have very fair equivalents for a tea-garden. Why was that grain of simplicity left out of the simple Anglo-Saxon? Is it that long centuries of a rainy mother isle have frightened us out of idling in the open? To walk, to ride, to play games, to camp, to explore, to do a thousand energetic things outdoors, yes; but to foregather with our friends under the greenwood tree and taste the taste of life, never! Speak to me not of barrooms or of tea-rooms. Both are of dubious report. And in both they look blackly at you if you stay more than ten minutes, while if you proposed to spend a day or a night they would call the police. Still, even I have never sat in one of those poplar isles or in the green room by the river or beside that perfect pool. The other firengis tell me that it is not a thing to do, and unhappily I can see it. Not that I see why a man should n't sit still if he wants to, or that I see too well why East is East and West is West. But I can see that a man must be what he is, or else he is nothing. I can see that what has been done in this world has been done by carrying on your own tradition. I can see that in vain does a Lafcadio Hearn dress himself in alien silks. I can see, too, that it would not please the other patrons of the tea-garden if I sat among them. They look upon me as unclean, a man of no God, sojourning among them for reasons dark and dire. So, having strolled at sunset in the wheatand poppy-fields of the farther bank, I follow the river to a certain bridge, or jump across it from rock to rock, and come down the dusty road in the twilight. When I reach the tip of the tea-garden I walk as slowly as I can, looking over the low wall. In front of that gap in the boulders I drop my stick or tie my shoe, and snatch a glimpse of ghostly turbans grouped around the pool, of pipe bowls suddenly reddening, of sunken lights, and one unsteady star. I catch a rumor of water or of incomprehensible words. And as I go home in the dark I hear behind me the plucking of dolorous strings, voices uplifted like a cry from another world. Marriage By MARY CAROLYN DAVIES BACK from the dusty church, The words all said And the strange kiss given, We walked down the long lane of Fourteenth Street, And shoppers, straggly shawls about their heads, The mirrors all about the walls seemed only We quite forgot that earth held other things Four blocks of windy street, Four flights of stairs, And then we stood Before your studio door. You turned the key, And groping in the dark, you found a candle And pouring tallow in a little pool Upon the mantelpiece, you stood it there In its tall whiteness. There was rain outside; The skylight hummed and rattled with its coming. A few faint sounds blew up from the loud distance; The grunt of a Salvation Army's drum Blent with the noise Of women's voices, roughened by the night, The street flung up its stones against our window, And frightened. We who had always been such open comrades Now were half afraid To touch each other's hands, To see each other's faces in the dim And holy dusk. We thought of God. I prayed to Him, As I had prayed when first you said, "I love you." The portraits you had painted were about us, Life seemed all ends Ends of things finished, ends of things begun, No safe and placid middles. Because the silence choked from utterance And then the silence Laid its hands even on these commonplaces. We looked at one another gravely, Shy children that our mothers, Youth and Life, Two startled children Permitted by the gold ring on my hand To stay and talk there in the dusk alone, And for the first time not to think of clocks, But, if we liked, watch night's dark bud bloom dawn. The silence grew and filled the room's dark corners. The candle on the table burned its life out, And its flame died, and all the room was dark; And on the skylight fell the black, loud rain; And in the world there was no other sound And the beating of my heart. Then in the dark You stumbled to me And caught me by the shoulders And laid your mouth on mine. And all the hunger of our lives for life, And all my hunger for you, yours for me, Surged up in us. Love caught us as a storm Rose like a tossing sea and swallowed us. IT By OSCAR GRAEVE Author of "The Keys of the City" Illustrations by Harry Townsend T is of course extraordinarily difficult. to put any faith in the existence of Ambrose Strange, but during the winter he lived in the house in West Sixteenth Street people besides me saw him; more than that, people besides me came to know him. Of them all, however, I knew him best, or perhaps I should amend that by saying I knew him better than did any other man; for Emily Thorp's knowledge must have gone deeper than mine. loved him. She Nevertheless, it was I who first saw him and, for that matter, who last saw him. It was I, too, who furnished him with the name "Ambrose Strange," just as I helped furnish him with hats and shoes, suits and overcoats, and all those other intimate things that a man must have on earth even though he is an angel. But let me tell you first of all of his advent, for this is, I suppose, the only suitable noun to use in describing the coming of an angel. Six hundred West Sixteenth Street (I am purposely using a fictitious number) is. a huge old private dwelling made over into studio apartments. It is a most comfortable old place, roomy beyond belief, with wide doorways and winding stairs, with spacious halls and deep-set windows. Chief of its comforts is the feeling of freedom that comes to you once you set foot within its capacious white doorway; you know you can come and go there without question or objection from any one. This house has never known the stigma of a peeping lodger or a grinning hall-boy. In making it over the renovators had left a double row of bells and letter-boxes within the doorway; over each box nestled a lodger's name. But no one except tradesmen ever thought of using these bells. Visitors plunged directly from the sunlight of the street into the twilight of the great hallway and, running up the stairs, assailed the door of the person they came to see. It was, I know, rather a free crowd who took refuge within those walls: men and women who tried to give expression to radical views in painting or writing, in advocating one cause or another, in doing what they could to defy the god of convention. It was the last place on earth which you would expect an angel to select for his habitation. But, then, Ambrose Strange was not at all the sort of creature one expects an angel to be. The night that he descended upon West Sixteenth Street was one of those colorless evenings of early autumn that lack warmth and yet are without the vigorous chill of autumn. It had been a gray day, vaporous and mildly depressing, the kind of day on which one does not notice when the sun disappears. I had tried to shake off the lethargy which possessed me by walking briskly up the avenue, but the close mistiness of the evening enshrouded me, enervated me, and I returned home ill prepared for the work I must do. Shortly after twelve there came a knock on my door, and I welcomed the interruption with a cordial, "Come in." The door swung open and revealed a heroic figure, white against the darkness of the hall. Around him was draped loosely a garment that looked as much like a Roman toga as anything else, and on his feet were sandals rather worn and shabby. Apparently that was all he wore. I must confess that I was astounded. I thought he must have strayed from one of those madcap costume-parties which are held frequently in that neighborhood. "What do you want?" I demanded. With a sweep of his draperies he |