Mrs. Armine was hungry, and ate heartily. She knew nothing about Eastern cooking, but she was a gourmet, and realized that Baroudi's cook was an accomplished artist in his own line. During the meal she was offered nothing to drink, but directly it was over Aïyoub brought to her a beautiful cup of gold or gilded silver--she did not know which--and poured into it with ceremonial solemnity a small quantity of some liquid.
"What is it?" she asked Baroudi.
"Drink!" he replied.
She lifted the cup to her lips and drank a draught of water.
"Oh!" she said, with an intonation of surprised disappointment.
"Lish rub el Moyeh en Nil awadeh!" he said.
"What does that mean?"
"'Who drinks Nile water must return.'"
She smiled, lifted the cup again to her lips, and drank the last drop of water.
"Nile water! I understand."
"And now you will have some sherbet."
He spoke to Aïyoub in Arabic. Aïyoub took away the cup, brought a tall, delicate glass, and having thrown over his right arm an elaborately embroidered napkin, poured into it from a narrow vase of china a liquid the colour of which was a soft and velvety green.
"Is this really sherbet?" Mrs. Armine asked.
"Sherbet made of violets."
"How is it made?"
By crushing the flowers of violets, making them into a preserve with sugar, and boiling them for a long time.
Aïyoub stayed by her while she drank, and when she had finished he offered her the embroidered napkin. She touched it with her lips.
"Do you like it?"
"It is very strange. But everything here is strange."
Aïyoub brought once more to his master the basin with the cover and the jug, and Baroudi washed his hands and rinsed his mouth as at the beginning of the meal. After this ceremony he again muttered a word or words, rose to his feet, took Mrs. Armine's left hand with his right, and led her to the divan. Aïyoub brought coffee, lifted the golden tray from its stool, set the coffee on a smaller tray upon the stool close to the divan, and went out, carrying the golden tray very carefully. As he vanished, the music outside ceased with an abruptness, a lack of finality, that were startling to an European. The almost thrilling silence that succeeded was broken by a bird singing somewhere among the orange-trees. It was answered by another bird.
"They are singing the praises of God," said Baroudi, in a deep and slow voice, and as if he were speaking to himself.
"Those birds!"
She gazed at him in wonder. He looked at her with sombre eyes.