gers inside
his low, soft collar, and kept them there while he added:

"They are like children, and must be treated as children. But they can
be very clever, too, when they want to trick. I know that. They can be
as cunning as foxes, and as light-footed and swift as gazelles. But all
that they do and all that they are is just for men. Women are made for
men, and they know it so well that it is only about men that they think.
I tell you that."

"No doubt it is true," she said, smilingly accepting his assertions.

"Women will run even after the Chinese shadow of a man if they are not
shut close behind the grilles."

Mrs. Armine laughed outright.

"And so you Easterns generally keep them there."

"Well, and are we not wise? Are we not much wiser than the Mr. Armeens
of Europe?"

His unexpected introduction of Nigel's name gave her a little shock, and
the bad taste of it for an instant distressed even her tarnished
breeding. But the sensation vanished directly as she remembered his
Eastern birth.

"And you?" she said. "Would you never trust a woman?"

"Never," he calmly returned. "All women are alike. If they see the
Chinese shadow, they must run after it. They cannot help themselves."

"You seem to forget that men are for ever running after the Chinese
shadows of women," she retorted.

"She thought of her own life, of how she had been worshipped and
pursued, not _pour le bon motif_, but still--"

She would like him to know about all that.

"Men do that to please women, as to please a child you give it a sand
lizard tied to a string. Put the string into its hand and the child is
happy. So it is with a woman. Only she wants not the string, but the
edge of a kuftan."

It seemed to Mrs. Armine, as she listened to Baroudi, that she was
permanently deposed from the place she had for long been accustomed to
occupy. He tacitly demanded and accepted her admiration instead of
giving her his. And yet--he had serenaded her on the Nile that first
evening of her coming. He had bought Hamza and Ibrahim. He had desired
and tried to effect the swift departure of Nigel. He had decreed that
Marie must go. And the Nile water--with how much intention he had given
it her to drink! And he had plans for the future. They seemed gathering
about her silently, softly, like clouds changing the aspect of her
world.

She had not turned that glove inside out yet.

She felt that she must alter her tactics, assert herself more strongly