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There was a little silence, broken only by the tiny whisper of the faskeeyeh. Then Mrs. Armine said gently: "Now, Nigel, you've had your surprise, and you ought to sleep. Doctor Isaacson's coming back to-morrow to have a consultation with Doctor Hartley at four o'clock." She spoke as if the whole matter were already arranged. "Sleep! You know I can't sleep. I never can sleep now."
And she had the door open and was through the doorway in an instant, and crying out in the long corridor that led to the room of the faskeeyeh: "Nigel! Nigel! What do you think of my surprise?" There were energy and beauty in the cry, and she came into the room with a sort of soft rush that was intensely feminine. The men were there.
One of the sliding doors was pushed back, the sunlight came in, tempered by the shade thrown by the awning, and she saw the little ball dancing in the faskeeyeh, and her husband looking inquiringly upon her, framed in the oblong of the doorway. "What on earth are you doing?" "Nothing!" she said, sitting up with a brusque movement. He laughed. "I believe you were taking a nap." She got up.
Instead of having slaves, to be herself a slave! She moved a little on the divan. The heavy perfume that pervaded the room seemed to be creeping about her with an intention to bring her under its influence. She heard the very faint and liquid murmur of the faskeeyeh, where the tiny gilded ball was rising, poising, sinking, governed by the aspiring and subsiding water.
She must centre them upon Nigel, must centre them in the Fayyūm, in the making of crops to grow where only sand had been, both in the Fayyūm and in another place, or she must centre them She smelt the heavy perfume; she smoothed the silken pillows with her long fingers; she stretched her body on the soft divan; she listened to the liquid whisper of the faskeeyeh.
She hurried on down the passage, pulled aside the orange-coloured curtain, and came into the room of the faskeeyeh. On the divan, dressed in native costume, with the turban and djelab, Baroudi was sitting on his haunches with his legs tucked under him, smoking hashish and gazing at the gilded ball as it rose and fell on the water.
The light that issued from the room of the faskeeyeh faintly illuminated part of the balcony. Isaacson heard the murmuring voice of Mrs. Armine again. Then one of the oblongs was again obscured, and the room was abruptly plunged in darkness. As Mrs. Armine returned, Isaacson stole down the shelving bank and took up a position close to the last window of this room.
The room was pervaded by a faint but heavy perfume, which had upon the senses an almost narcotic effect. "What a strange room!" said Mrs. Armine. She had stood quite still near the door. Now she walked forward, followed by the two men, until she had passed the faskeeyeh and had reached the foot of the dais.
The man who had bought the cuckoo-clocks and the cheap vases, who had set the gilded ball dancing upon the water of the faskeeyeh, who had broken the dim harmony of the colours in his resting-place by the introduction of that orange hue which seemed to reflect certain fierce lights within his nature, walked hand-in-hand with the shrewd money-maker, the determined pleasure-seeker, the sensual dreamer, the acute diplomatist.
The gilded ball in the faskeeyeh, the slave covered with jewels in the harîm. She stretched out her arms along the cushions; she stretched out her limbs along the divan, her long limbs that were still graceful and supple. How old did Baroudi think her? Arabs never know their ages.
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