d 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 Aswan. 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?"

Ibrahim's soft eyes had become suddenly sharp and bright.

"Do you know Mahmoud Baroudi, my lady?"

"We met him on the ship coming from Naples."

"Very big--big as Rameses the Second, the statue of the King hisself
what you see before you