We met toward evening, she quivering under such a load, that I would not let her carry it, but abandoned my day’s labour, which was lighter, and took hers, which was quite enough: we went back Westward, seeking all the while some shelter from the saturating night-dews of this place: and nothing could we find, till we came again, quite late, to her broken funeral-kiosk at the entrance to the immense cemetery-avenue of Eyoub. There without a word I left her among the shattered catafalques, for I was weary; but having gone some distance, turned back, thinking that I might take some more raisins from the bag; and after getting them, said to her, shaking her little hand where she sat under the roof-shadow on a stone:
“Good night, Clodagh.”
She did not answer promptly: and her answer, to my surprise, was a protest against her name: for a rather sulky, yet gentle, voice came from the darkness, saying:
“I am not a Poisoner!”
“Well,” said I, “all right: tell me whatever you like that I should call you, and henceforth I will call you that.”
“Call me Eve,” says she.
“Well, no,” said I, “not Eve, anything but that: for my name is Adam, and if I called you Eve, that would be simply absurd, and we do not want to be ridiculous in each other’s eyes. But I will call you anything else that you like.”
“Call me Leda,” says she.
“And why Leda?” said I.
“Because Leda sounds something like Clodagh,” says she, “and you are al‑leady in the habit of calling me Clodagh; and I saw the name Leda in a book, and liked it: but Clodagh is most hollible, most bitterly hollible!”
“Well, then,” said I, “Leda it shall be, and I shan’t forget, for I like it, too, and it suits you, and you ought to have a name beginning with an L. Good night, my dear, sleep well, and dream, dream.”
“And to you, too, my God give dleams of peace and pleasantness,” says she; and I went.
And it was only when I had lain myself upon leaves for my bed, my head on my caftan, a rill for my lullaby, and two stars, which alone I could see out of the heavenful, for my watch-lights; and only when my eyes were already closed toward slumber, that a sudden strong thought pierced and woke me: for I remembered that Leda was the name of a Greek woman who had borne twins. In fact, I should not be surprised if this Greek word Leda is the same word etymologically as the Hebrew Eve, for I have heard of v’s, and b’s, and d’s interchanging about in this way, and if Di, meaning God, or Light, and Bi, meaning Life, and Iove, and Ihovah and God, meaning much the same, are all one, that would be nothing astonishing to me, as widow, and veuve, are one: and where it says, “truly the Light is Good (tob, bon),” this is as if it said, “truly the Di is Di.” Such, at any rate, is the fatality that attends me, even in the smallest things: for this Western Eve, or Greek Leda, had twins.
Well, the next morning we crossed by the ruins of old Greek Phanar across the triple Stamboul-wall, which still showed its deep-ivied portal, and made our way, not without climbing, along the Golden Horn to the foot of the Old Seraglio, where I soon found signs of the railway. And that minute commenced our journey across Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, to Trieste, occupying no day or two as in old times, but four months, a long-drawn nightmare, though a nightmare of rich happiness, if one may say so, leaving on the memory a vague vast impression of monstrous ravines, ever-succeeding profundities, heights and greatnesses, jungles strange as some moonstruck poet’s fantasy, everlasting glooms, and a sound of mighty unseen rivers, cataracts, and slow cumbered rills whose bulrushes never see the sun, with largesse everywhere, secrecies, profusions, the unimaginable, the unspeakable, a savagery most lush and fierce and gaudy, and vales of Arcadie, and remote mountain-peaks, and tarns shy as old-buried treasure, and glaciers, and we two human folk pretty small and drowned and lost in all that amplitude, yet moving always through it.
We followed the lines that first day till we came to a steam train, and I found the engine fairly good, and everything necessary to move it at my hand: but the metals in such a condition of twisted, broken, vaulted, and buried confusion, due to the earthquake, that, having run some hundreds of yards to examine them, I saw that nothing could be done in that way. At first this threw me into a condition like despair, for what we were to do I did not know: but after persevering on foot for four days along the deep-rusted track, which is of that large-gauge type peculiar to Eastern Europe, I began to see that there were considerable sound stretches, and took heart.
I had with me land-charts and compass, but nothing for taking altitude-observations: for the Speranza instruments, except one compass, had all been broken-up by her shock. However, on getting to the town of Silivri, about thirty miles from our start, I saw in the ruins of a half-standing bazaar-shop a number of brass objects, and there found several good sextants, quadrants, and theodolites. Two mornings later, we came upon an engine in mid-country, with coals
