Mrs. Armine's left hand with his right,
and led her to the divan. Aiyoub brought coffee, lifted the golden tray
from its stool, set the coffee on a smaller tray upon the stool close to
the divan, and went out, carrying the golden tray very carefully. As he
vanished, the music outside ceased with an abruptness, a lack of
finality, that were startling to an European. The almost thrilling
silence that succeeded was broken by a bird singing somewhere among the
orange-trees. It was answered by another bird.

"They are singing the praises of God," said Baroudi, in a deep and slow
voice, and as if he were speaking to himself.

"Those birds!"

She gazed at him in wonder. He looked at her with sombre eyes.

"You do not know these things."

Suddenly she felt like an ignorant and stupid child, like one unworthy
of knowledge.

He sipped his coffee. He was now sitting in European fashion beside her
on the divan, and his posture made it more difficult for her to accept
his strange mentality; for he looked like a tremendously robust, yet
very lithe and extremely handsome and determined young man, who might
belong to a race of Southern Europe. Even with the tarbush upon his head
his appearance was not unmistakably Eastern.

And this man, evidently quite seriously, talked to her about the birds
singing to each other the praises of God.

"You ought to be differently dressed," she said.

"How?"

"In Egyptian clothes, not English flannels."

"Some day you shall see me like that," he said, reassuringly. "I often
wear the kuftan at night upon the _Loulia_."

"At night upon the _Loulia_! Then how on earth can I see you in it?"

She spoke with a sudden sharp irritation. To-day her marriage with Nigel
seemed to her like a sword suspended above her, which would presently
descend upon her, striking her to earth with all her capacity for
happiness unused.

"You will see me with the drawers of linen, the sudeyree, the kuftan,
the gibbeh--or, as says my father, jubbeh--and the turban on my head.
Only you must wait a little. But women do not like to wait for a
pleasure. They are always in a hurry."

The cool egoism with which he accepted and commented on her admiration
roused in her, not anger, but a sort of almost wondering respect. It
seemed part of his strength. He lifted his eyebrows, threw back his
head, showing his magnificent throat, and with the gesture that she had
noticed in the garden of the Villa Androud thrust two fin