arette
and drink her coffee. In returning from the mountains she had scarcely
spoken to Ibrahim, and had not spoken to Hamza except to wish him
good-night upon the bank of the Nile. She remembered now the expression
in his almond-shaped eyes when he had returned her salutation--an
unfathomable expression of ruthless understanding that stripped her
nature bare of all disguises, and seemed to leave it as it was for all
the men of this land to see.

Ibrahim's eyes never could look like Hamza's. And yet between Ibrahim
and Hamza what essential difference was there!

Suddenly she said to herself: "Why should I bother my head about these
people, a servant and a donkey-boy?"

In England she would never have cared in the least what the people in
her service thought about her. But out here things seemed to be
different. And Ibrahim and Hamza had brought her to the place where
Baroudi had been waiting to meet her. They were in Baroudi's pay. That
was the crude fact. She considered it now as she sat alone, sipping the
Turkish coffee that Hassan had carried out to her, and smoking her
cigarette. She said to herself that she ought to be angry, but she knew
that she was not angry. She knew that she was pleased that Ibrahim and
Hamza had been bought by Baroudi. Easterns are born with an appetite for
intrigue, with a love of walking in hidden ways and creeping along
devious paths. Why should those by whom she happened to be surrounded
discard their natures?

And then she thought of Nigel.

How much more at her ease she was with Baroudi than she could ever be
with Nigel! What Nigel desired she could never give him. She might seem
to give it, but the bread would be really a stone, even if he were
deceived. And he would be deceived. But what Baroudi desired she could
give. It seemed to her to-night indeed that she was born to give just
what he desired. She made no mistake about herself. And he could give to
her exactly what she wanted. So she thought now. For, since the long day
in the mountains, her old ambition seemed to have died, to have been
slain, and, with its death, had suddenly grown more fierce within her
the governing love, or governing greed, for material things-for money,
jewels, lovely bibelots, for all that is summed up in the one word
_luxe_. And Baroudi was immensely rich, and would grow continually
richer. She knew how to weigh a man in the balance, and though, even for
her, there was mystery in him, she could form