. The merchant came out to Cairo during the dancer's second season at
the opera. Baroudi entertained him, became his friend, talked business,
impressed the Dane immensely with his practical qualities, put him up to
some splendid 'specs.' Result--the Dane was ruined, and went back to
Copenhagen minus his fortune and--naturally--minus his lady-love."

"And what became of her?"

"I forget. Don't think I ever knew. She vanished from the opera house.
But the best of it is that the Dane to this day swears by Baroudi, and
thinks it was his own folly that did for him. There are much worse
things than that, though. Baroudi's a man who would stick at absolutely
nothing once he got the madness for a woman into his body. For
instance--"

He told stories of Baroudi, stories which the Europeans of Egypt knew
nothing of, but which some Egyptians knew and smiled at; one or two of
them sounded very ugly to European ears.

"He's a Turco-Egyptian, you know," Starnworth said, presently, "and has
the cunning that comes from the Bosphorus grafted on to the cunning that
flourishes beneath the indifference of the Sphinx. We should call him a
rank bad lot"--the dressing-gown and slippers manner was very much in
evidence just here--"but the Turco-Egyptian has a different code from
ours. I must say I admire the man. He's got so much grit in him. Worker,
lover, hater--there's grit and go in each. Whichever bobs up, bobs up to
win right out. But it's the madness for women that really rules the
fellow's life, according to Egyptians who are near him and who know him
well. And that's so with far more men of Eastern blood than you would
suppose, unless you'd lived among them and knew them as I do. Arabs will
literally run crazy for a fair face. So will Egyptians. And once they
are dominated, they are dominated to an extent an Englishman would
scarcely be able to understand. I knew an Arab of the Sahara who broke
down the palm-wood door of an auberge at El-Kelf and cut the throat of
the Frenchwoman who kept it, cut it while she was screaming her soul
out--and only to get the few francs in the till to send to a girl in
Paris he'd met at the great Exhibition. And the old Frenchwoman had
befriended that man for over sixteen years, had almost brought him up
from a boy, had written his letters for him to the tourists and
sportsmen whose guide he was. Mahmoud Baroudi would do as much for a
woman, once he'd got the madness for her into his body, but he'd do