THE END
Mrs Comstock Bell sat at breakfast on the broad, tiled terrace of the Hotel Cecil. Ahead of her, a grey bulk showing dimly above the Riffian coast, was Gibraltar; to the left, a soft undulating sweep of Spanish hills; left and a little behind her, the white jumble of Tangier, one slim green minaret rising from the pleasing chaos of white and blue. The murmur of the awakened city came out to her and brought a little sense of exhilaration.
Tangier was so much alive, so virile, so mysterious, so old, it was like a place in the Old Testament lit by electricity, a scrap of Babylon, if you could imagine Babylon with advertisements of absinthe plastered on the palace walls.
The sea was a gorgeous blue and motionless. Far away on the horizon, a great steamer, hull down, was making its w
