By the time they had left this cloistered garden and threaded their way
indoors, Stephen had lost his bearings completely. He was convinced
that, once in, he should never find the clue which would guide him out
again as he had come. There was another garden court, much larger than
the first, and this, Nevill said, had been the garden of the
palace-women in days of old. It had a fountain whose black marble basin
was fringed with papyrus, and filled with pink, blue, and white water
lilies, from under whose flat dark pads glimmered the backs of darting
goldfish. Three walls of this garden had low doorways with cunningly
carved doors of cedar-wood, and small, iron-barred windows festooned
with the biggest roses Stephen had ever seen; but the fourth side was
formed by an immense loggia with a dais at the back, and an open-fronted
room at either end. Walls and floor of this loggia were tiled, and
barred windows on either side the dais looked far down over a world
which seemed all sky, sea, and garden. One of the little open rooms was
hung with Persian prayer-rugs which Stephen thought were like fading
rainbows seen through a mist; and there were queer old tinselled
pictures such as good Moslems love: Borak, the steed of the prophet,
half winged woman, half horse; the Prophet's uncle engaged in mighty
battle; the Prophet's favourite daughter, Fatma-Zora, daintily eating
her sacred breakfast. The other room at the opposite end of the tiled
loggia was fitted up, Moorish fashion, for the making of coffee; walls
and ceiling carved, gilded, and painted in brilliant colours; the floor
tiled with the charming "windmill" pattern; many shelves adorned with
countless little coffee cups in silver standards; with copper and brass
utensils of all imaginable kinds; and in a gilded recess was a curious
apparatus for boiling water.
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