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BEYOND A MEADOW OF ASPHODEL 217 he had confined himself almost entirely to isolated architectural details ; and the general aspect and the general condition of the town was still left to my imagination, like a sort of changing cloud. I took it to bed with me in this state and dreamt of it ; and Î rose next morning with all the greater zest ready to find out the truth of the matter for myself. Once more I realised, when, under the cloudless sunshine, I started after breakfast, the faithful Scotty guiding me, that Cyprus was a land of many climates, all delightful and all having the soft blandishment of a siren. The street of Varoshia by day was as picturesque as it was by night. The shops were like those of a mountain town in Italy ; and the pale collections of pottery, stacked in the open air, gave it in places the look of a sculptor's studio. It died away into a sort of open common, bounded on the right by green gardens and olive woods, and beyond them was a sea, which recalled the hues of the. Eiviera. Crossing this common, on whose edges the sky rested, I paused on a low ridge to take in the scene beyond. What I looked upon was a shining meadow of asphodel, with a bevy of Turkish women in white yashmaks, moving across it slowly like a living cluster of lilies. To the right of me still, was the sea and a belt of gardens ; to the left on the hori-zon were the grave-stones of a Turkish cemetery ; and in front of me the asphodel swelled like a hardly perceptible wave, till its crest approached and very nearly eclipsed a stretch of interminable masonry

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