s
nature, and shrink from him, despite the powerful attraction he
possessed for her, despite her own freedom from scruple, her own ironic
and even cruel outlook upon the average man.

In any case he was silent, and she almost forgot the shadow of his
truth, which had risen out of the depths and stood before her on the
terraces of the Villa Androud. Had she remembered it now, it might have
rendered her uneasy, but it could not have recalled her from the path
down which she was just beginning to go. For her life had blunted her,
had coarsened her nature. She had followed too many ignoble impulses,
has succumbed too often to whim, to be the happy slave of delicacy, or
to allow any sense of patriotism to keep her hand in virtue's.

She told herself that when Baroudi's eyes had spoken to her on the
_Hohenzollern_ they had spoken in reply to the summons of her beauty,
and for no other reason. What else could such a woman think? And yet
there were moments when feminine intuition sought for another reason,
and, not finding it, went hungry.

Baroudi had no need to seek for more reasons in her than jumped to his
eyes. Ever since he had been sixteen he had been accustomed to the
effect that his assurance, combined with his remarkable physique, had
upon Western women.

And so each day Ibrahim and Hamza brought this Western woman to the
place he had appointed, and always he was there before her.

Baroudi loved secrecy, and Mrs. Armine had nothing to fear at present
from indiscretion of his. And she had no fear of that kind in connection
with him.

But there were envious eyes in the villa--eyes which watched her go each
morning, which greeted her on her return at sundown with a searching
light of curiosity. For years she had not been obliged to care what her
maid thought about her. But now she had to care. Obligations swarm in
the wake of marriage. Marie knew nothing, had really no special reason
to suspect anything, but, because of her mistress's personality,
suspected all that a sharp French girl with a knowledge of Paris can
suspect. And while Mrs. Armine trusted in the wickedness of Ibrahim and
Hamza, she did not trust in the wickedness of Marie.

The _Loulia_ had vanished from Luxor with its master. Mrs. Armine, left
alone for a little while, naturally spent her time, like all other
travellers upon the Nile, in sightseeing. She lunched out, as almost
every one else did. There was no cause for Marie to be suspicious.

Y