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“Isn’t it lovely?” she asked, softly, and Charlie awoke out of a reverie, and made haste to answer that it was heavenly.

“I have longed for this all my life,” said Cecil, “and Lady Haigh says that Baghdad will be even better.”

“Better? in what way?” asked Charlie.

“More Eastern, you know,” said Cecil, “but I can’t imagine anything more perfect than this.”

“I see that you are one of the people who feel the fascination of the East,” said he.

“Who could help it?” asked Cecil. “It is a fascination, there is no other word for it. Kingsley says that a longing for the West is bound up in the hearts of men, but I think that in this age of the world the reverse is true. I daresay if I had ever been in America it would be different; but now it seems to me that all the romance is gone from the West, and that it is all big towns, and gold-mines, and wonderful inventions, and rush. The East seems so mysterious and reposeful, so old, too, and so picturesque.”

“And yet,” said Charlie, “you want to change it all, and import into it the newest ideas in religions and the latest Yankee culture. You would like all those mysterious veiled women, with the beautiful eyes, whom you saw to-day, to be turned into learned ladies in tweed frocks and hard hats, with spectacles and short hair.”