"I found Kizil's rug used as a doormat at the servants' quarters. A thousand heavy boots left their rub and dirt on it. On the beard of Omar, grease spots, and one eye of Hafiz burned out by the fire from a cigarette, as if done in jest. All my dreams a miserable looking rag--a few tatters. "It was a lie! she never resembled Kizil in the least. It was the beginning of my punishment. Take, friend, those topazes from me, or I shall throw them into the street." Youssuf Afghian kneeled down before an icon in the corner of the room and prayed fervently. Once for himself, and once for the brother he killed many, many years ago on the shores of the River Atrek. BABETA'S DOG She was only a little puppy when she was brought to Babeta's restaurant. And because Babeta has a literary turn of mind, he renamed her Ophelia when Sonori, the tenor, who knew more about dogs than about literature, said she was a Dane. It was due to Ophelia that Babeta, the anarchist-communist philosopher, became very much interested in dogdom and learned to distinguish an Airdale from a Bulldog and a Spaniel from a Dane. They ceased talking about music and philosophy at Babeta's, and, though the Goyescas almost created a stir in the musical world and Bergson had delivered a lecture in Rumfold Hall, Babeta and his artist guests neglected such transcendental interests because of the change brought about in the direction of their thoughts by a dog, because of a little puppy they had named Ophelia. Sonori discovered that Shakespeare, and not Verdi, was the author of "The Moor of Venice," and when the talk turned about the Scandinavians, many another musical celebrity heard for the first time the name of Ibsen or of Bjornson. And there was even a lonely man in the crowd who had read a story by Knut Hamsun, that greatest of all Scandinavian writers, whose tales have no equal in the world's literature. In what strange surroundings Ophelia was destined to live! Near Eighth Avenue, before Fortieth Street. The smell of garlic and tomato sauce warns the passer-by that the inhabitants are from Piedmonte, but on the street one hears the Irish brogue. The bales of cotton in front of the warehouses and the smoke from the chimneys reek after Liverpool, but the smell of rope, tar and fried smelts that comes from the wharves near by remind one of Fiume and Marseille, as the swaying masts and the spread-out sails outline themselves against the glowing sky. And in such surroundings, back of one of the numerous saloons in which stale beer is served to drunken sailors and dust-covered longshoremen, is the celebrated restaurant of Babeta.