Abruptly Meyer Isaacson seemed to come before her in the darkness, looking into her eyes as he had looked in his consulting-room when she had put up her veil and turned her face towards the light. She shut her eyes. Why should she think about him now? Why should she call him up before her?
She heard a slight rustle near her, and she started and opened her eyes. By one of the French windows the dragoman Ibrahim was standing, perfectly still now, and looking steadily at her. He held a flower between his teeth, and when he saw that she had seen him, he came gracefully forward, smiling and almost hanging his head, as if in half-roguish deprecation.
"What did you say your name was?" Mrs. Armine asked him.
He took the flower from his teeth, handed it to her, then took her hand, kissed it, bent his forehead quite low, and pressed her hand against it.
"Ibrahim Ahmed, my lady."
She looked at his gold-coloured robe, at his European jacket, at the green and gold fringed handkerchief which he had wound about his tarbush, and which covered his throat and fell down upon his breast.
"Very pretty," she said, approvingly. "But I don't like the jacket. It looks too English."
"It is a present from London, my lady."
"Al-lah--"
Always the sailors' song seemed growing louder, more vehement, more insistent, like a strange fanaticism ever increasing in the bosom of the night.
"Where are those people singing, Ibrahim?" said Mrs. Armine.
She put his flower in the front of her gown, opening her cloak to do so.
"They seem to get nearer and nearer. Are they coming down the river?"
"I s'pose they are in a felucca, my lady. They are Noobian peoples. They always make that song. It is a pretty song."
He gently moved his head, following the rhythm of the music. Between the green and gold folds of his silken handkerchief his gentle brown eyes always regarded her.
"Nubian people!" she said. "But Luxor isn't in Nubia."
"Noobia is up by Aswân. The obelisks come from there. I will show you the obelisks to-morrow, my lady. There is no dragoman who understands all 'bout obelisks like Ibrahim."
"I am sure there isn't. But"--those voices of the singing sailors were beginning almost to obsess her--"are all the boatmen Nubians then?"
"Nao!" he replied, with a sudden cockney accent.
"But these that are singing?"
"I say they are Noobian peoples, my lady. They are Mahmoud Baroudi's Noobian peoples."
"Baroudi's sailors!" said Mrs. Armine.
She sat up straight in her chair.
"But Mahmoud Baroudi isn't here, at Luxor?"