But though Mrs. Armine had moments of exultation in these days, which she often told herself were her days of liberty, she had also many moments of apprehension, of depression, of wonder about the future, moments that were more frequent as she began more fully to realize the truth of her nature now fiercely revealing itself.
She had never supposed that within her there still remained so strong a capacity for feeling. She had never supposed it possible that she could really care for a man again--care, that is, with ardour, with the force that brings in its train uneasiness and the cruel desire to monopolize, to assert oneself, to take possession, not because of feminine vanity or feminine greed, but because of something lodged far deeper among the very springs of the temperament. She had never imagined that, at this probably midmost epoch of her life, there could be within her such a resurrection as that which soon she began to be anxiously aware of. The weariness, the almost stagnant calm that had, not seldom, beset her--they sank down suddenly like things falling into a measureless gulf. Body and mind bristled with an alertness that was not free from fever.
She said to herself sometimes, trying to play false even with herself, that the blame, or at least the responsibility, for this change must be laid on the shoulders of Egypt.
And then she looked, perhaps, at the mighty shoulders of Baroudi. And he saw the look, and understood her better than she just then chose to say to herself that she understood herself.
And yet for many years she had not been a woman who had tried to play tricks with her own soul. This man was to have an effect not only upon the physical part of her, but also upon that in her which would not respond to tender attempts at influencing it towards goodness or any lofty morality, but which existed, a vital spark, incorporeal, the strange and wonderful thing in the cage of her ardent flesh.
And Mahmoud Baroudi? Was there any drama being acted behind the strong, but enigmatic, exterior which he offered to the examination of the world and of this woman?
Mrs. Armine sometimes wondered, and could not determine. She knew really little of him, for though he seemed often to be very carelessly displaying himself exactly as he was, at the close of each interview she went back to the villa with a mind not yet emptied of questions. She was often strangely at ease with him because he did not ask from her that which she could not give, and therefore she could be herself when with him. But the Eastern man does not pour confidences into the ear of the Western woman, nor are the workings of his mind like the workings of the mind of a Western man. Never till now had Mrs. Armine known a secret intimacy, or any intimacy, like this, procured by bribery, and surely hastening to a swift and decisive ending.