"Go to Luxor, Ibrahim! Go at once!"
"I goin' quick, my lady."
She sprang on board and stood to see him go. Only when the boat had diminished upon the dark water did she turn round. She was face to face with Hamza.
"Hamza!" she said, startled.
His almond-shaped eyes regarded her, and she thought a menace was in them. Even in the midst of her fiery excitement she felt a touch of something that was cold as fear is cold.
"Yes," he said.
"I must see Mahmoud Baroudi."
He did not move. His expression did not change. The Nubians, squatting in a circle on the deck a little way off, looked at her calmly, almost as animals look at something they have very often seen.
"Where is he?" she said. "Where is he?"
And abruptly she went down the steps, under the golden letters, and into the first saloon. It was lit up, but no one was there. She hurried on down the passage, pulled aside the orange-coloured curtain, and came into the room of the faskeeyeh.
On the divan, dressed in native costume, with the turban and djelab, Baroudi was sitting on his haunches with his legs tucked under him, smoking hashish and gazing at the gilded ball as it rose and fell on the water. A little way off, supported by many cushions, an Eastern girl was lying. She looked very young, perhaps sixteen or seventeen. But her face was painted, her eyes were bordered with kohl, and the nails of her fingers and of her bare toes were tinted with the henna. She wore the shintiyan, and a tob, or kind of shirt of coloured and spangled gauze. On her pale brown arms there were quantities of narrow bracelets. She, too, was smoking a little pipe with a mouthpiece of coral.
Mrs. Armine stood still in the doorway. She looked at the girl, and now, immediately, she thought of her own appearance, with something like terror.
"Baroudi!" she said. "Baroudi!"
He stared at her face.
When she saw that, with trembling fingers she unfastened her cloak and let it fall on the floor.
"Baroudi!" she repeated.
But Baroudi still stared at her face.
With one hand he held the long stem of his pipe, but he had stopped smoking.
At once she felt despair.
But she came on into the middle of the saloon.
"Send her away!" she said. "Send her away!"
She spoke in French. And he answered in French: "Why?"
"I've left my husband. I've left the villa. I can never go back."
"Why not?" he said, still gazing at her face.
He threw back his head, and his great throat showed among the folds of muslin that swept down to his mighty chest.