Page:Idalia, by 'Ouida' volume 2.djvu/320

Rh wild Libyan tracts in the sultry glories of autumn days and nights, by a season's sojourn in some friend's summer-palace among the roses of Damascus, or in the ruby glow of the Nile suns, painting, shooting, swimming, boating; finding ever and everywhere the happiness of fearless, fetterless, vivid life, oftentimes nomadic, and glad in the mere gladness of strength, in the mere desert chief's sense of liberty, with

The memories even of a single year supplied him with a thousand sources from which to draw pictures of varied scenes, whose recital entranced imperceptibly and unconsciously first one and then another of his auditors, till the whole circle of the monks stood around as men in the East will stand around the narrator who tells of far countries and of strange fortunes, while the narghilé vapours out, and the coffee steams fragrantly in the open divan, and the grave Mussulmans stroke their beards in silent wonder.

It entranced them, this recital of worlds