That evening, when Mrs. Armine stepped out of the felucca at the foot of the garden of the Villa Androud, she did not wait for Ibrahim to help her up the bank, but hurried away alone, crossed the garden and the terrace, went to her bedroom, shut and locked the door, lit the candles on either side of the long mirror that stood in the dressing-room, pushed up her veil, and anxiously looked at her "undone" face in the glass.
Had her action been very unwise? Several times that day, while with Baroudi, she had felt something that was almost like panic invade her at the thought of what she had done. Now, quite alone and safe, she asked herself whether she had been a fool to obey Nigel's injunction and to trust her own beauty.
She gazed; she took off her hat and she gazed again, hard, critically, almost cruelly.
There came a sharp knock against the door.
"Who is it?"
"C'est moi, madame!"
Mrs. Armine went to the door and opened it.
"Come here, Marie!" she said, almost roughly, "and tell me the truth. I don't want any flattering or any palavering from you. Do you think I look younger, better looking, with something on my face, or like this?"
She put her face close to the light of the candles and stood quite still. Marie examined her with sharp attention.
"Madame has got to look much younger here," she said, at length. "Madame has changed very much since we have been in Egypt. I do not know, but I think, perhaps, here madame can go without anything, unless, of course, she is going to be with Frenchmen. But if madame is much in the sun, at night she should be careful to put--"
And the maid ran on, happy in a subject that appealed to her whole nature.
Mrs. Armine dined alone and quickly. It was past nine o'clock when she finished, and went out to sit on the terrace and to smoke her cigarette and drink her coffee. In returning from the mountains she had scarcely spoken to Ibrahim, and had not spoken to Hamza except to wish him good-night upon the bank of the Nile. She remembered now the expression in his almond-shaped eyes when he had returned her salutation--an unfathomable expression of ruthless understanding that stripped her nature bare of all disguises, and seemed to leave it as it was for all the men of this land to see.
Ibrahim's eyes never could look like Hamza's. And yet between Ibrahim and Hamza what essential difference was there!
Suddenly she said to herself: "Why should I bother my head about these people, a servant and a donkey-boy?"