body, and answered gravely:

"All what you want you must have, my lady."

"Don't call me 'my lady' to-day!" she exclaimed, with a sudden
sharpness.

Ibrahim looked amazed and hurt.

"Never mind, Ibrahim!"--she touched her forehead--"I've got a bad head
to-day, and it makes me cross about nothing."

He thrust one hand into his gold-coloured skirt, and produced a glass
bottle full of some very cheap perfume from Europe.

"This will cure you, my la--mees. Rub it on your head. It is a bootiful
stink. It stinks lovely indeed!"

She accepted it with a grateful smile, and he went pensively to order
the tea; letting his head droop towards his left shoulder, and looking
rather like a faithful dog that, quite unexpectedly, is not wanted by
his mistress. Mrs. Armine sat still, frowning.

She could hear the Nubians of Baroudi singing as they bent to their
mighty oars; not the song of Allah with which they had greeted her on
her arrival, obedient perhaps to some message sent from Alexandria by
their master, but a low and mysterious chaunt that was almost like a
murmur from some spirit of the Nile, and that seemed strangely
expressive of a sadness of the sun, as if even in the core of the golden
glory there lurked a canker, like the canker of uncertainty that lies in
the heart of all human joy.

The day was beginning to decline; the boatmen's voices died away;
Hassan, in obedience to Ibrahim's order, brought out tea to his mistress
in the garden. When he had finished arranging it, he stood near her for
a moment, looking across the water to Baroudi's big white dahabeeyah,
which was tied up against the bank a little way down the river. In his
eyes there were yellow lights.

"What are you doing, Hassan?" asked Mrs. Armine.

The tall Nubian turned towards her.

"Mahmoud Baroudi is rich!" he said. "Mahmoud Baroudi is rich!"

He looked again at the dahabeeyah; then he came to the little table,
moved a plate, touched and smoothed the table-cloth, and went quietly
away.

Mrs. Armine sipped her tea and looked, still frowning, at the river,
which began to lose its brown colour slowly, to gleam at first with
pallid gold, then with a gold that shone like fire. The eddies beyond
the breakwater were a light and delicate mauve and looked nervously
alive. A strange radiance that was both ethereal and voluptuous, that
seemed to combine elements both spiritual and material, was falling over
this world, clothing it in a sparkling vei