s a mattress covered with gaudy rugs that
served as a bed.

In the tent there were two people. Although the thin sound of the music
had suggested a woman to Mrs. Armine, the player was not a woman, but a
tall and large young man, dressed in a bright yellow jacket cut like a
"Zouave," wide drawers of white linen, yellow slippers, and the tarbush.
Round his waist there was a girdle, made of a long and narrow red and
yellow shawl with fringes and tassels. He was squatting cross-legged on
the hideous carpet, holding in his large, pale hands, artificially
marked with blue spots and tinted at the nails with the henna, a strange
little instrument of sand-tortoise, goat-skin, wood, and catgut, with
four strings from which he was drawing the plaintive and wavering tune.
He wore a moustache and a small, blue-black beard. His eyes were half
shut, his head drooped to one side, his mouth was partly open, and the
expression upon his face was one of weak and sickly contentment. Now and
then he sang a few notes in a withdrawn and unnatural voice, slightly
shook his large and flaccid body, and allowed his head to tremble almost
as if he were seized with palsy. Despite his breadth, his large limbs,
and his beard, there was about his whole person an indescribable
effeminacy, which seemed heightened, rather than diminished, by his bulk
and his virile contours. A little way from him on the mattress a girl
was sitting straight up, like an idol, with her legs and feet tucked
away and completely concealed by her draperies.

Mrs. Armine looked from the man to her with the almost ferocious
eagerness of the bitterly jealous woman. For she guessed at once that
the man was no lover of this girl, but merely an attendant, perhaps a
eunuch, who ministered to her pleasure. This was Baroudi's woman, who
would stay here in the tent beside him, while she, the fettered,
European woman, would ride back in the night to Kurun. Yet could this be
Baroudi's woman, this painted, jewelled, bedizened creature, almost
macawlike in her bright-coloured finery, who remained quite still upon
her rugs--like the macaw upon its perch--indifferent, somnolent surely,
or perhaps steadily, enigmatically watchful, with a cigarette between
her painted lips, above the chin, on which was tattooed a pattern
resembling a little, indigo-coloured beard or "imperial"? Could he be
attracted by this face, which, though it seemed young under its thick
vesture of paint and collyrium, woul