d without looking at
me, in a dialect I had never heard before. So I offered him a
gold-tipped cigarette, that being a universal language. He
waived the offer aside with something between astonishment and
disdain. He had lean, long-fingered hands, entirely unlike
those of the desert fraternity, who live too hard and fight
too frequently to have soft, uncalloused skin and unbroken
finger-nails.

He did not exactly fascinate me. His self-containment was
annoying. It seemed intended to convey an intellectual and moral
importance that I was not disposed to concede without knowing
more about him. I suppose an Arab feels the same sensation when
a Westerner lords it over him on highly moral grounds. At any
rate, something or other in the way of pique urged me to stir him
out of his self-complacency, just as one feels urged to prod a
bull-frog to watch him jump.

He seemed to understand my remarks, for he took no trouble to
hide his amusement at my efforts with the language. But he
only answered in monosyllables, and I could not understand
those. So after about five minutes I gave it up, and crossed
the room to ben Nazir, who seized the opportunity to show me
my sleeping-quarters.

It proved to be a room like a monastery cell, up one flight of
stone steps, with two other rooms of about the same size on
either side of it. At the end of the passage was a very heavy
wooden door, with an iron lock and an enormous keyhole, which I
suppose shut off the harem from the rest of the house; but as I
never trespassed beyond it I don't know. I only do know that a
woman's eye was watching me through that key-hole, and ben Nazir
frowned impatiently at the sound of female giggling.

"The Sheikh Anazeh will have the room on this side of you," he
said, "and the Sheikh Suliman ben Saoud the room on the other.
So you will be between friends."

"Suliman ben Saoud seems a difficult person to make friends
with," I answered.

Ben Nazir smiled like a prince out of a picture-book--beautiful
white teeth and exquisite benignance.

"Oh, you mustn't mind him. These celebrities from the centre of
Arabia give themselves great airs. To do that is considered
evidence of piety and wisdom."

I sat on the bed--quite a civilized affair, spotlessly clean.
Ben Nazir took the chair, I suppose, like the considerate host he
was, to give me the sensation of receiving in my own room.

"He wears the same sort of head-dress you do. What does it