at the Ramesseum--eyes large as mine, and hair
over them what goes like that!"

He put up his brown hands and suddenly sketched Baroudi's curiously
shaped eyebrows.

Mrs. Armine nodded. Ibrahim stretched out his arm towards the Nile.

"Those are his Noobian peoples. They come from his dahabeeyah. It is at
Luxor, waiting for him. They have nuthin' to do, and so they make the
fantasia to-night."

"He is coming here to Luxor?"

Ibrahim nodded his head calmly.

"He is comin' here to Luxor, my lady, very nice man, very good man. He
is as big as Rameses the Second, and he is as rich as the Khedive. He
has money--as much as that."

He threw out his arms, as if trying to indicate the proportions of a
great world or of an enormous ocean.

"Here comes my gentleman!" he added, suddenly dropping his arms.

Nigel returned from the darkness of the garden.

"Hulloh, Ibrahim!"

"Hulloh, my gentleman!"

"Keeping your mistress company while I was gone? That is right."

Ibrahim smiled, and sauntered away, going towards the bank of the Nile.
His golden robe faded among the little trunks of the orange-trees.

"It was the gardener's dog," said Nigel, letting himself down into his
chair with a sigh of satisfaction. "I've made him feed the poor brute.
It was nearly starving. That's why it came to us."

"I see."

"Al-lah!" he murmured, saying the word like an Eastern man.

He looked into her eyes.

"The first word you hear in the night from Egypt, Ruby, Egypt's night
greeting to you. I have heard that song up the river in Nubia often,
but--oh, it's so different now!"

During her long experience in a life that had been complex and full of
changes, Mrs. Armine had heard the sound of love many times in the
voices of men. But she had never heard till this moment Nigel's full
sound of love. There was something in it that she did not know how to
reply to, though she had the instinct of the great courtesan to make the
full and perfect reply to the desires of the man with whom she had
schemed to ally herself. She owed this reply to him, but she owed it how
much more to something within herself! But there existed within him a
hunger for which she had no food. Why did he show this hunger to her?
Already its demonstration had tried her temper, but to-night, for the
first time, she felt her whole being set on edge by it. Nevertheless,
she was determined he should not see this, and she answered very
quietly:

"I am hearing this so