Page:Maud Howe - A Newport Aquarelle.djvu/111

 southern lands. What he knew he had learned from actual contact with the world and its people, and there was no guide-book knowledge or other cheap information to be got from him. He had lived in Syria with a band of Bedouins, and his descriptions of their adventurous life never failed to interest Gladys. He had learned their strange music, and could sing their wild songs of love and battle wonderfully well. He had no theories about the men and women he had known. They had fallen across his path like people one meets in the glare of mid-day, when no shadow is cast upon the ground by the figures. He saw them clean cut, as they stood against the background of their own surroundings, and no shadowy reflection fell behind them as his explanation of their characters or actions. He saw people distinctly, and remembered them as they were. This quality of impersonal judgment was very fascinating to Gladys, who always enveloped the men and women she had