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PEACE THAT PASSES UNDERSTANDING 115 confused sadness. I little knew what sadness, of a very definite kind, had been near me all the while amongst that desolation and silence, and that I should see it face to face on the occasion of my second visit. And now that I have mentioned the Konak, the ramparts, the bazaar, and the cathedral, the tourist's sights of Nicosia have, I think, all been enumerated. But the other sights—sights that slowly showed themselves and gave the place its character by a series of delicate touches, each dependent for its force on its surroundings as much as on itself—these were innumerable, and can be described only by specimens. They were, in fact, not so much sights as experiences ; and every day yielded a fresh crop of them. One afternoon, for instance, in a street that was then strange to me I caught, through an open doorway, a glimpse of a long cloister. Slanting sunlight was coming in through its arches, together with some orange boughs and banana trees, out of an unseen garden. I ventured in, with the feeling of a timid trespasser. Directly within the entrance, dim in the vaulted shadow, was a door, surmounted by a mass of intricate carving. At each extremity of the device was a quaint heraldic lion, and in the middle I detected the heads and the wings of angels. I advanced into the cloister. The sleepy garden revealed itself, and on the other side a series of whitewashed cells, each with a bed, a chair, and a bare wooden ι 2

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