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Updated: June 20, 2025
Behind him, in the Eastern house of Baroudi the spray of the little fountain aspired, and the tiny gilded ball rose and fell with an airy and frivolous movement. Mrs. Armine was not reasoning as she came in to these two. She was acting purely on the prompting of an instinct long proved by life. There was within her no mental debate. She did not know how long she had stood alone.
And she had only just realized it, suddenly, very thoroughly. "What are you like?" she said. "I want to know." She moved the fan gently, very languidly, to and fro. "But you can tell me, because you can see me all the time, and I cannot see myself unless I take the glass," he said. "Not outside, Baroudi, inside." She spoke rather as if to a child.
She turned, and saw Baroudi praying, on a prayer-rug with a niche woven in it, which was duly set towards Mecca. She, the unbeliever, was encompassed by prayer. And something within her told her that the moment for flight already lay behind her, that she had let it go by unheeded, that the hands which already had touched her would not relax their grasp until what?
She watched the dreaming smokers, the dreaming dancers, till she seemed to be living in a nightmare, to be detached from earth and all things she had ever known till now. But Baroudi did not come. And at last she returned through the dancing quarters, where her sense of nightmare deepened. Again she did not sleep. When day came, she felt really ill.
She did so, with the smiling grace that had affected Nigel, had even affected Meyer Isaacson. She put up her veil, lifted the gilded case, looked at herself in the mirror steadily, critically, took the powder-puff and deftly used it. She knew instinctively that Baroudi liked to see her do this. When she was satisfied with her appearance she put the case down.
Baroudi entertained him, became his friend, talked business, impressed the Dane immensely with his practical qualities, put him up to some splendid 'specs. Result the Dane was ruined, and went back to Copenhagen minus his fortune and naturally minus his lady-love." "And what became of her?" "I forget. Don't think I ever knew. She vanished from the opera house.
Even Baroudi seemed to be deeply interested in sand-ploughs. Mrs. Armine forgot the Nile. She was not at all interested in sand-ploughs, but she was interested in this other practical side of Baroudi, which was now being displayed to her.
Yes, he could. As she looked, with the horrible intuition of a feverishly strung up and excited woman Mrs. Armine felt the fascination such a creature held to tug at a man like Baroudi.
On her pale brown arms there were quantities of narrow bracelets. She, too, was smoking a little pipe with a mouthpiece of coral. Mrs. Armine stood still in the doorway. She looked at the girl, and now, immediately, she thought of her own appearance, with something like terror. "Baroudi!" she said. "Baroudi!" He stared at her face.
Once again her nostrils drew in the faint but heavy perfume which she always associated with Baroudi, and now with the whole of the East, and with all Eastern things. That racing dromedary had surely carried her through the night from one world to another.
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