not
like that."

She gazed at the brown hand that held the ear. How unnatural that action
had seemed to her! Yet to him it was perfectly natural. Surely in
everything he was the opposite of all that she was accustomed to. He
took his hand away from his ear.

"How much have you been out of Egypt?" she asked him.

"Not very much. I have been three times to Naples in the hot weather. My
father had a villa at Posilipo. I have been with my father to Vichy. I
have been four times to Paris. I have been to Constantinople, and I have
travelled in Syria."

"Did you go to Palestine?"

"Jerusalem--no. That is for Copts!"

He spoke with disdain. Then he added, with a sort of calm pride and a
certain accession of dignity:

"I have been, of course, to Mecca."

"The real man--is he to be found in his religion?"

The thought came to her, and again she--she of all women! How strange
that was!--felt the fascination of his faith.

"To Mecca!" she said.

Men passed through deserts to reach the holy places. Nigel one evening
had told her something of that journey, and she had felt rather bored.
Now she looked at a pilgrim who had gone with the Sacred Carpet, and she
was bored no longer.

"Hamza--is he your servant?" she asked, with an apparent irrelevance,
that was not really irrelevance.

"He is a donkey-boy at Luxor."

"Yes. He used not to be my donkey-boy. He has only been my donkey-boy
since--since my husband has gone. They say in Luxor he is really a
dervish."

"They say many things in Luxor."

"They call him the praying donkey-boy. Has he too been to Mecca?"

His face slightly changed. The eyes narrowed, the sloping brows came
down. But after a short pause he answered:

"He went to Mecca with me. I paid for him to go."

She did not know much of Mohammedans, but she knew enough to be aware
that Hamza was not likely to forget that benefit. And Baroudi had chosen
Hamza to be her donkey-boy. She felt as if the hands of Islam were laid
upon her.

"Hamza must be very grateful to you!" she said, slowly.

Baroudi made no reply. She looked away over the wild geraniums, down the
alley between the trees to the hollow in the river-bank, and she saw a
lateen sail glide by, and vanish behind the trees, going towards the
south. In a moment another came, then a third, a fourth. The fourth was
orange-coloured. For an instant she followed its course beyond the
leaves of the orange-trees. How many boats were going southwards