y, and a soft and striding step. Somebody
was coming quickly. She drew back into her room, and Ibrahim appeared.

"My lady, what you want?"

She pointed to the window.

"The shutter--it's got loose. Can you fasten it? It's making such an
awful noise. I shan't be able to sleep all night."

He opened the window. The wind rushed in. The lamp flared up and went
out.

For two or three minutes Mrs. Armine heard nothing but the noise of the
wind, which seemed to have taken entire possession of the chamber, and
she felt as if she were its prey and the prey of the darkness. Something
that was like hysteria seized upon her, a desperate terror of fate and
the unknown. In the wind and in the darkness she had a grievous
sensation of helplessness and of doom, of being lost for ever to
happiness and light. And when the wind was shut out, when a match
grated, a little glow leaped up, and Ibrahim, looking strangely tall and
vast in the black woollen abayeh which he had put on as a protection
against the cold, was partially revealed, she sprang towards him with a
feeling of unutterable relief.

"Oh, Ibrahim, what an awful night! I'm afraid of it!" she said.

Deftly he lit the lamp; then he turned to her and stared.

"My lady, you are all white, like the lotus what Rameses him carry."

She had laid her hand on his arm. Now she let it drop, sat down on the
sofa, unpinned her hat and veil, and threw them down on the floor.

"It's the storm. I hate the sound of wind at night."

"The ginnee him ride in the wind," said Ibrahim, very seriously.

"The ginnee! What is that?"

"Bad spirit. Him come to do harm. Him bin in the room to-night."

They looked at each other in silence. Then Mrs. Armine said:

"Is the shutter quite safe now?"

"Suttinly."

"Then good night, Ibrahim."

"Good night, my lady."

He went over to the door.

"Suttinly the ginnee him bin in the room to-night," he said, solemnly.

She tried to smile at this absurdity, but her lips refused to obey her
will.

"Who should he come for?" she asked.

"I dunno. P'raps he come to meet my Lord Arminigel. It is bad night
to-night. Mohammed him die to-night. Him die on the night from Sunday
Monday."

He drooped morosely and went out, softly closing the door behind him.

As soon as he had gone Mrs. Armine undressed, leaving her clothes
scattered pell-mell all over the room, and got into her bed. She kept
the lamp burning. She was afraid of the dark, and she kne