An Art Shop in Greenwich Village

Synopsis

It was a room perhaps thirty feet in length and half as broad. My first impression as I stepped over the threshold was that I had stepped across the world—in one brief instant transported from the bare, ramshackle, tumbledown Bohemianism of Greenwich Village, into the semibarbaric, Levantine splendor of some Musselman ruler. The room was carpeted with Oriental rugs; its walls were hung with tapestries; its windows shrouded with portieres. Moorish weapons—only symbols now of the Mohammedan reign over Spain—decorated the walls. Two couches were piled high with vividly colored pillows.

A light footfall sounded near at hand, a rustling of silk, the click of a latch. A girl stood in the partly opened side door—a young girl, hardly more than fifteen or sixteen, dressed in Moorish costume. She stood an instant hesitating, with her back partly turned to me, looking about the room. Then, leaving the door open behind her, she picked up a lute that was standing against the wall—I had net noticed before that it was there—and crossed the room toward the fireplace.

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