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She was given a knife and fork and a spoon, all made of silver, and the plates were of silver, which did not harmonize well with the golden tray. Baroudi used only his fingers and pieces of bread in eating. Mrs. Armine was hungry, and ate heartily. She knew nothing about Eastern cooking, but she was a gourmet, and realized that Baroudi's cook was an accomplished artist in his own line.
I told him we were going up the Nile in Baroudi's boat, and how splendid you were looking, and how immensely happy we were. I told him we were going to cut all the travellers, and just live for our two selves in the quiet places where there are no steamers and no other dahabeeyahs. And I told him how magnificently well I was." "Oh, treating him as the great Doctor, I suppose!"
She had never had any conversation with Hamza. She had never heard him say any English word yet but "yes." But to-night she had an uneasy longing to get upon terms with him. For he was Baroudi's emissary in the camp of the Fayyūm. "Are you glad to be in my service, Hamza?" she said. "Are you glad to come with us to the Fayyūm?" "Yes," he said. She hesitated.
Far up the river the Loulia was moored, between Baroudi's orange-gardens and Armant, and each day he dropped down the Nile in his white boat to meet the European woman, bringing only one attendant with him, a huge Nubian called Aïyoub. The tourists who come to Luxor seldom go far from certain fixed points.
Then she had felt that the hands of the East had grasped her, that they would never let her go, and something within her had recoiled, though something else had desired only that to be grasped by Baroudi's hands. The praying men had frightened her. Yet she believed in no God. If there really was a God! If He looked upon her now! She sprang up, and turned out the light.
"Directly I go on board the Loulia, you are to go. Take the boat straight back to Luxor." "I leavin' you?" He looked relieved. "Yes. I'll I'll come back in Baroudi's felucca." "I quite well stayin', waitin' till you ready." "No, no. I don't wish that. Promise me you will take the boat away at once." "All what you want you must have," he murmured. "How loudly the sailors are singing!" she said.
Armine looked from the man to her with the almost ferocious eagerness of the bitterly jealous woman. For she guessed at once that the man was no lover of this girl, but merely an attendant, perhaps a eunuch, who ministered to her pleasure. This was Baroudi's woman, who would stay here in the tent beside him, while she, the fettered, European woman, would ride back in the night to Kurûn.
She must make Nigel very happy, lest she should fall below Baroudi's estimate of her, lest she should prove herself less clever, less subtle, than she felt him to be. Hamza's shadowy figure crossed a little bridge of palm-wood that spanned the runlet of water, turned and came over the waste ground noiselessly into the camp. He was walking with naked feet.
Perhaps that was his fault, though, for he had been reserved with her, had not said to her all he was thinking, or indeed anything he was thinking. "Ruby! I say, Ruby!" Following a strong impulse, he hastened after her, and came up with her on the bank of the Nile. "Look!" she said. "What? Oh, Baroudi's dahabeeyah tied up over there! Yes, I knew that. It's to get out of the noise of Luxor.
And there was much in Baroudi's mind, even in connection with herself, that she could not possibly know. Something about him, nevertheless, she was able to find out. Baroudi's father was a rich Turco-Egyptian. His mother had been a beautiful Greek girl, who had embraced Islâm when his father fell in love with her and proposed to marry her.
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