ion proceeded with his task. Squatting down upon his
haunches, with his thin brown legs well under his reed-like body, he
poured the water from the saucepan into one of the copper pots, set the
pot on the brazier, and seemed to sink into a reverie, with his
enigmatic eyes, that took all and gave nothing, fixed on the burning
coals. Mrs. Armine was motionless, watching him, but he never looked at
her. There was something animal in his abstraction. Presently there came
from the pot a murmur. Instantly Hamza stretched out his hand, took the
pot from the brazier and the bowl of coffee from the ground, let some of
the coffee slip into the water, stirred it with a silver spoon which he
produced from a carefully folded square of linen, and set the pot once
more on the brazier. Then he unfolded the paper which held the
ambergris, put a carat weight of it into the second pot and set that,
too, on the brazier. The coffee began to simmer. He lit a stick of
mastic, fumigated with its smoke the two little coffee-cups, took the
coffee-pot, and gently poured the fragrant coffee into the pot
containing the melted ambergris, let it simmer for a moment there,
poured it out into the coffee-cups, creaming and now sending forth with
its own warm perfume the enticing perfume of ambergris, added a dash of
the cardamom seed, and then, at last, looked towards Mrs. Armine.

"It's ready? Then--then shall I put the sugar in?" she said.

"Yes," said Hamza, looking steadily at her.

She stretched out her hand, but not to the sugar bowl. Just as she did
so a voice from over their heads called out:

"Ruby! Ruby!"

"Come down here!" she called, in answer.

"But I want you to come up and see the sunset and the afterglow with
me."

"Come down here first," she called.

"Right!"

The coffee-making was finished. Hamza got up from his haunches, lifted
up the brazier, and went softly away, carrying it with a nonchalant ease
almost as if it were a cardboard counterfeit weighing nothing.

In a moment Nigel came into the dim room of the fountain.

"Where are you? Oh, there! We mustn't miss our first sunset."

"Coffee!" she said, smiling.

He came out on to the balcony, and she gave him one of the little cups.

"Did you make it yourself?"

"No. But I will to-morrow. Hamza has been showing me how to."

He took the cup.

"It smells delicious, as enticing as perfumes from Paradise. I think you
must have made it."

"Drink it, and believe so--yo