ere."

An embroidered curtain, the ground of which was orange colour, covered
with silks of various hues, faced them at the end of the corridor.
Baroudi pulled aside this curtain, pushed back a sliding door of wood
that was almost black, and said:

"Will you go in first, madame?"

Mrs. Armine stepped in, with an almost cautious slowness.

She found herself in a large saloon, which took in the whole width of
the stern of the dahabeeyah. The end of this saloon widened out and was
crescent-shaped, and contained a low dais with curving divans, divided
by two sliding doors which were now pushed back in their recesses,
giving access to a big balcony that looked out over the Nile and that
was protected by an awning. The wooden ceiling was cut up into lozenges
of black and gold, and was edged by minute inscriptions from the Koran,
in gold on a black ground. All the windows had lattices of mashrebeeyeh
work fitted to them, and all these lattices were closed. Against the
walls, which were as dark in colour as the mashrebeeyeh work, there were
a number of carved brackets, on which were placed various extremely
common things--cheap and gaudy vases from Naples and Paris, two more
Swiss cuckoo-clocks, a third clock with a blue and white china face--and
a back that looked as if were made of brass, a musical-box, and a
grotesque monster, like a dragon with a dog's head, in rough yellow and
blue earthenware. There were no chairs in the room, though there were
some made of basket-work on the balcony, but all the lower part of the
wall space was filled with broad divans. In the centre of the floor
there was a sunken receptacle of marble, containing earth, in which
dwarf palms were growing, and a faskeeyeh, or little fountain, which
threw up a minute jet of water, upon which airily rose and fell a gilded
ball about the size of a pea. All over the floor were strewn exquisite
rugs. The room was pervaded by a faint but heavy perfume, which had upon
the senses an almost narcotic effect.

"What a strange room!" said Mrs. Armine.

She had stood quite still near the door. Now she walked forward,
followed by the two men, until she had passed the faskeeyeh and had
reached the foot of the dais. There she turned round, with her back to
the light that came in through the narrow doorways leading to the
balcony. Baroudi had shut the door by which they had come in, and had
pulled over it a heavy orange-coloured curtain, which she now saw for
the f