"How much have you been out of Egypt?" she asked him.
"Not very much. I have been three times to Naples in the hot weather. My father had a villa at Posilipo. I have been with my father to Vichy. I have been four times to Paris. I have been to Constantinople, and I have travelled in Syria."
"Did you go to Palestine?"
"Jerusalem--no. That is for Copts!"
He spoke with disdain. Then he added, with a sort of calm pride and a certain accession of dignity: "I have been, of course, to Mecca."
"The real man--is he to be found in his religion?"
The thought came to her, and again she--she of all women! How strange that was!--felt the fascination of his faith.
"To Mecca!" she said.
Men passed through deserts to reach the holy places. Nigel one evening had told her something of that journey, and she had felt rather bored. Now she looked at a pilgrim who had gone with the Sacred Carpet, and she was bored no longer.
"Hamza--is he your servant?" she asked, with an apparent irrelevance, that was not really irrelevance.
"He is a donkey-boy at Luxor."
"Yes. He used not to be my donkey-boy. He has only been my donkey-boy since--since my husband has gone. They say in Luxor he is really a dervish."
"They say many things in Luxor."
"They call him the praying donkey-boy. Has he too been to Mecca?"
His face slightly changed. The eyes narrowed, the sloping brows came down. But after a short pause he answered: "He went to Mecca with me. I paid for him to go."
She did not know much of Mohammedans, but she knew enough to be aware that Hamza was not likely to forget that benefit. And Baroudi had chosen Hamza to be her donkey-boy. She felt as if the hands of Islâm were laid upon her.
"Hamza must be very grateful to you!" she said, slowly.
Baroudi made no reply. She looked away over the wild geraniums, down the alley between the trees to the hollow in the river-bank, and she saw a lateen sail glide by, and vanish behind the trees, going towards the south. In a moment another came, then a third, a fourth. The fourth was orange-coloured. For an instant she followed its course beyond the leaves of the orange-trees. How many boats were going southwards!
"All the boats are going southwards to-day," she said.
"The breeze is from the north," he answered, prosaically.
"I want to go further up the Nile."
"If you go, you should take a dahabeeyah."
"Like the Loulia. But I am sure there is not a second Loulia on the Nile."