e would show
that she had not slept. And Baroudi stared at her while he sang.

Again she was seized by fear.

XVIII

Late the next morning there awoke with Mrs. Armine a woman who for a
time had lain in a quiescence almost like that of death, a woman who
years ago had risked ruin for a passion more physical than ideal, who,
when ruin actually overtook her, had let the ugly side of her nature run
free with a loose rein, defiant of the world.

Only when she awoke to that new day did she fully realize the long
effort she had been making, and how it had tired and irritated her
nerves and her temperament. She had won her husband by playing a part,
and ever since she had won him she had gone on playing a part. And this
acting had not hitherto seemed to her very difficult, although there had
been moments when she had longed fiercely to show herself as she was.
But now that she had spent some hours with a man who read her rightly,
and who desired of her no moral beauty, no strivings after virtue, no
bitter regret for any actions of the past, she realized the weight of
the yoke she had been bearing, and she was filled with an almost angry
desire for compensation.

She felt as if destiny were heavily in her debt, and she was resolved
that the debt should be paid to the uttermost farthing.

Freed from the restraint of her husband's presence, and from the burden
of his perpetual though very secret search for the moral rewards she
could never give him, her whole nature seemed violently to rebound.
During the days that immediately followed she sometimes felt more
completely, more crudely, herself than she had ever felt before, and she
was often conscious of the curious, almost savage, relief that the West
sometimes feels when brought into close touch with the warm and the
subtle barbarity of the East, of the East that asks no questions, that
has omitted "Why?" from its dictionary.

Baroudi was as totally devoid of ordinary scruples as the average
well-bred Englishman is full of them. He had, no doubt, a code of his
own to guide his conduct towards his co-religionists, but this code
seemed wholly inoperative when he was brought into relation with those
of another race and faith.

And Mrs. Armine was a woman, and therefore, in his eyes, on a lower
plane than himself.

Among the attractions which he possessed for Mrs. Armine, certainly not
the least was his lack of respect for women as women. It is usually
accepted a