What a feast of color! And you notice that somehow these changing combinations always result in harmonies. One feels the same effect as though he were listening to a clash of barbarous instruments in a sweet, wild melody of the desert. There goes a chocolate-colored Nubian, in a terra cotta tunic, carrying a shining copper kettle under each arm. His glistening feet and legs are bare. That bronze-skinned Arab yonder in the white turban must be a very old man, for his beard and hair are as white as the wool on a sheep that is newly washed and ready for the shearer; yet he is straight and lithe as a figure on a French clock, and his skin is exactly the same color. He wears a bright red sash about his waist and walks with a staff as tall as himself. Red fezzes everywhere and turbans of all bright hues. But we must have another cherry water--_vicinada_--and move into the shade. Now, who are these somber-looking creatures, coming across the square? If there were any such thing on earth they would be agents of the Spanish Inquisition. But that horror does not exist even in Turkey. Through the warm yellow sun they move, slowly, silently, muffled all in black, with black umbrellas above their heads--shapeless, sepulchral figures. On the black veil that covers each face are painted white eyes, a nose and a mouth; or a palm tree or other device. They stroll by us talking in whispers, but a silvery girlish laugh, stifled almost in its birth, betrays them. Ah, sweet demons, we know you now! These are nuns of love, houris of the harem. Who knows what sweet faces, merry eyes, red lips, warm and yielding forms masquerade in those forbidding garments? We know you now; not all the disguises ever invented by fanaticism and jealousy can cover the roguish features of love. That one little, stifled laugh conjured up more poetry and romance than could be read in a summer's holiday--the Arabian Nights, Don Juan, and the vision of Dudu; the song of the bulbul in old gardens, dangerous trystings in the shadow of the cypress trees; Tom Moore in a city office, dreaming of camel bells and the minarets of Ispahan.