Magick Without Tears

326 MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS material considerations to influence me, and I clung-oh triple fool!-to my sentimental obligations towards Laylah. We finally decided to do what he asked, though part of my objection was founded on his refusal to give us absolutely definite instructions. However, we crossed the Passes in a sleigh to Chiavenna, whence we took the train to Milan. In this city we had a final conversation with Ab-ul-Diz. I had exhausted his patience, as he mine, and he told us that he would not visit us any more. He gave us his final instructions. We were to go to Rome, though he refused to name the exact spot. We were to take a villa and there write Book 4. I asked him how we might recognize the right Villa. I forget what answer he gave through her, but for the first time he flashed a message directly into my own consciousness. "You will recognize it beyond the possibility of doubt or error ," he told me. With this a picture came into my mind of a hillside on which were a house and garden marked by two tall Persian Nuts. The next day we went on to Rome. Owing to my own Ananias-like attempt to "keep back part of the price," my relations with Virakam had become strained. We reached Naples after two or three quarrelsome days in Rome and began house-hunting. I imagined that we should find dozens of suitable places to choose from, but we spent day after day scouring the city and suburbs in an automobile, without finding a single place to let that corresponded in the smallest degree with our ideas. Virakam's brat-a most god-forsaken lout-was to join us for the Christmas holidays, and on the day he was due to arrive we motored out as a forlorn hope to Posilippo before meeting him at the station at 4 o'clock or thereabouts. But the previous night Virakam had a dream in which she saw the desired villa with absolute clearness. (I had been careful to say nothing to her about the Persian Nuts, so as to have a weapon against her in case she insisted that such and such a place was the one intended .) After a fruitless search we turned our automobile towards