Owen followed Béclère through a courtyard, where a fountain sang in dreamy heat and shade, bringing a little sensation of coolness into the closed room, which did not strike him as being particularly Moorish, notwithstanding the engraved brass lamps hanging from the ceiling, and the Oriental carpet on the floor, and the screen inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Owen did not know whether linen sheets were a European convention, and could be admitted into an Eastern dwelling-house, but he was not one of those who thought everything should be in keeping. He liked incongruities, being an inveterate romancist and only a bedouin by caprice. One appreciates sheets after months of pilgrimage, and one appreciates a good meal after having eaten nothing for a long while better than sand-goose roasted at th
