u absurd person!" she said, gently.

He sipped, and she did likewise.

"It's perfect, simply perfect. But what has been put into it to give it
this peculiar, delicious flavour, Ruby?"

"Ah, that's my secret."

She sipped from her little cup.

"It is extraordinarily good," she said.

She pointed to the small paper packets, which Hamza had not yet carried
off.

"The preparation is almost like some sacred rite," she said. "We put in
a little something from this packet, and a little something from that.
And we smoke the cups with one of those burning sticks of mastic. And
then, at the very end, when the coffee is frothing and creaming, we dust
it with sugar. This is the result."

"Simply perfect."

He put his cup down empty.

"Look at that light!" he said, pointing over the rail to the yellow
water which they were leaving behind them. "Have you finished?"

"Quite."

"Then let's go on deck--coffee-maker."

They were quite alone. He put his arm around her as she stood up.

"Everything you give me seems to me different from other things," he
said--"different, and so much better."

"Your imagination is kind to me--too kind. You are foolish about me."

"Am I?"

He looked into her eyes, and his kind and enthusiastic eyes became
almost piercing for an instant.

"And you, Ruby?"

"I?"

"Could you ever be foolish about me?"

For a moment his joy seemed to be clouded by a faint and creeping doubt,
as if he were mentally comparing her condition of heart with his, and as
if the comparison were beginning--only just beginning--dimly to distress
him. She knew just how he was feeling, and she leaned against him,
making her body feel weak.

"I don't want to," she said.

"Why not?"

Already the cloud was evaporating.

"I don't want to suffer. I want to be happy now in the short time I have
left for happiness."

"Why do you say 'the short time'?"

"I'm not young any more. And I've suffered enough in my life."

"But through me! How could you suffer? Don't you trust me completely
even yet?"

"It isn't that. But--it's dangerous for a woman to be foolish about any
man. It's a folly to care too much."

She spoke with a sincerity there was no mistaking, for she was thinking
about Baroudi.

"Only sometimes. Only when one cares for the weak, or the insincere.
We--needn't count the cost, and hesitate."

She let him close her lips, which were opening for a reply, and while he
kissed her she listened to the