"I heard them singing, up in my bedroom. Run along! Don't keep him waiting."
With the final words she seemed to make an effort, to try to assume the playful, half-patronizing manner of a pretty woman of the world to a man supposed to adore her; but she allowed her lips to tremble so that he might see she was playing a part. He did not dare to say that he saw, and he went down to the bank of the Nile, got into the felucca that was waiting, and was rowed out into the river.
As soon as he had gone, Mrs. Armine called Ibrahim to come and put a chair and a table for her in the shadow of the wall, close to the stone promontory that was thrust out into the Nile to keep its current from eating away the earth embankment of the garden.
"I am going to have tea here, Ibrahim," she said. "Tell Hassan to bring it directly the sun begins to set."
"Yes, suttinly," replied the always young and cheerful. "And shall Ibrahim come back and stay with you?"
She shook her head, looking kindly at the boy, who had quickly learnt to adore her, as had all the Nubians in the villa.
"Not to-day, Ibrahim. To-day I want to be alone."
He inclined his long, thin body, and answered gravely: "All what you want you must have, my lady."
"Don't call me 'my lady' to-day!" she exclaimed, with a sudden sharpness.
Ibrahim looked amazed and hurt.
"Never mind, Ibrahim!"--she touched her forehead--"I've got a bad head to-day, and it makes me cross about nothing."
He thrust one hand into his gold-coloured skirt, and produced a glass bottle full of some very cheap perfume from Europe.
"This will cure you, my la--mees. Rub it on your head. It is a bootiful stink. It stinks lovely indeed!"
She accepted it with a grateful smile, and he went pensively to order the tea; letting his head droop towards his left shoulder, and looking rather like a faithful dog that, quite unexpectedly, is not wanted by his mistress. Mrs. Armine sat still, frowning.
She could hear the Nubians of Baroudi singing as they bent to their mighty oars; not the song of Allah with which they had greeted her on her arrival, obedient perhaps to some message sent from Alexandria by their master, but a low and mysterious chaunt that was almost like a murmur from some spirit of the Nile, and that seemed strangely expressive of a sadness of the sun, as if even in the core of the golden glory there lurked a canker, like the canker of uncertainty that lies in the heart of all human joy.