,
escape from the modest position he seemed to be deliberately placing her
in. Where was her pride, even of a courtesan?

She lifted her coffee-cup, emptied it, put it down, and began to pull on
one of her long white gloves. Baroudi went on calmly smoking. She picked
up the second glove. He sharply clapped his hands. Aiyoub entered,
Baroudi spoke to him in Nubian, and he swiftly disappeared. Mrs. Armine
pulled on the second glove.

"Now I must go home," she said.

She moved to get up, but her movement was arrested by the furtive
entrance of a thin man clad in what looked to her like a bit of sacking,
with naked arms, chest, legs, and feet, and a narrow, pointed head,
completely shaved in front and garnished at the back with a mane of
greasy black hair, which fell down upon his shoulders. In his hand,
which was almost black, he held a short stick of palm-wood, and with an
air of extravagant mystery, mingled with cunning, he crept round the
room close to the walls, alternately whistling and clucking, bending his
head, as if peering at the floor, then lifting it to gaze up at the
ceiling. He had shot a keen glance at Mrs. Armine as he came in, but he
seemed at once to forget her, and to be wholly intent upon his
inexplicable occupation.

After moving several times in this manner round the room, he stopped
short, almost like a dog pointing, then drew from inside his coarse
garment a wrinkled receptacle of discoloured leather with a
widely-opened mouth, cried out some words in a loud, fierce voice,
leaped upwards, and succeeded in striking the ceiling with his stick.

A long serpent fell down into the bag.

Mrs. Armine uttered a cry of surprise, but not of alarm. She was not
afraid of snakes. The darweesh went creeping about as before, presently
called out some more words, and struck at the wall. A second serpent
fell into the bag, or seemed to fall into it, from some concealed place
among the silken draperies. Again he crept about, called, struck, and
received another reptile. Then a little dark-eyed boy ran in, salaaming,
and the darweesh and the boy, to the accompaniment of wild music played
outside, went through a performance of snake-charming and jugglery
familiar enough in the East, yet, it seems, eternally interesting to
Easterns, and fascinating to many travellers. When it was over the
little boy salaamed and ran out, but the music, which was whining and
intense, still went on, and the darweesh advanced, holdi