years she had not been a woman who had tried to play
tricks with her own soul. This man was to have an effect not only upon
the physical part of her, but also upon that in her which would not
respond to tender attempts at influencing it towards goodness or any
lofty morality, but which existed, a vital spark, incorporeal, the
strange and wonderful thing in the cage of her ardent flesh.

And Mahmoud Baroudi? Was there any drama being acted behind the strong,
but enigmatic, exterior which he offered to the examination of the world
and of this woman?

Mrs. Armine sometimes wondered, and could not determine. She knew really
little of him, for though he seemed often to be very carelessly
displaying himself exactly as he was, at the close of each interview she
went back to the villa with a mind not yet emptied of questions. She was
often strangely at ease with him because he did not ask from her that
which she could not give, and therefore she could be herself when with
him. But the Eastern man does not pour confidences into the ear of the
Western woman, nor are the workings of his mind like the workings of the
mind of a Western man. Never till now had Mrs. Armine known a secret
intimacy, or any intimacy, like this, procured by bribery, and surely
hastening to a swift and decisive ending.

Upon the _Hohenzollern_ Baroudi must have laid his plans to see her as
he was seeing her now. He did not tell her so, but she knew it. Had she
not known it upon ship-board? In their exchange of glances how much had
been said and answered?

Despite her life of knowledge, she said to herself now that she did not
know. And there was much in Baroudi's mind, even in connection with
herself, that she could not possibly know.

Something about him, nevertheless, she was able to find out.

Baroudi's father was a rich Turco-Egyptian. His mother had been a
beautiful Greek girl, who had embraced Islam when his father fell in
love with her and proposed to marry her. She assumed the burko, and
vanished from the world into the harim. And in the harim she had
eventually died, leaving this only son behind her.

The Turco-Egyptians are as a rule more virile, more active, more
dominant, and perhaps more greedy than are the pure-bred Egyptians. In
the days before the English protectorate they held many important
positions among the ruling classes of Egypt. They lined their pockets
well, plundering those in their power with the ruthlessness
characterist