ck a little way off, looked at her calmly, almost
as animals look at something they have very often seen.

"Where is he?" she said. "Where is he?"

And abruptly she went down the steps, under the golden letters, and into
the first saloon. It was lit up, but no one was there. She hurried on
down the passage, pulled aside the orange-coloured curtain, and came
into the room of the faskeeyeh.

On the divan, dressed in native costume, with the turban and djelab,
Baroudi was sitting on his haunches with his legs tucked under him,
smoking hashish and gazing at the gilded ball as it rose and fell on the
water. A little way off, supported by many cushions, an Eastern girl
was lying. She looked very young, perhaps sixteen or seventeen. But her
face was painted, her eyes were bordered with kohl, and the nails of her
fingers and of her bare toes were tinted with the henna. She wore the
shintiyan, and a tob, or kind of shirt of coloured and spangled gauze.
On her pale brown arms there were quantities of narrow bracelets. She,
too, was smoking a little pipe with a mouthpiece of coral.

Mrs. Armine stood still in the doorway. She looked at the girl, and now,
immediately, she thought of her own appearance, with something like
terror.

"Baroudi!" she said. "Baroudi!"

He stared at her face.

When she saw that, with trembling fingers she unfastened her cloak and
let it fall on the floor.

"Baroudi!" she repeated.

But Baroudi still stared at her face.

With one hand he held the long stem of his pipe, but he had stopped
smoking.

At once she felt despair.

But she came on into the middle of the saloon.

"Send her away!" she said. "Send her away!"

She spoke in French. And he answered in French:

"Why?"

"I've left my husband. I've left the villa. I can never go back."

"Why not?" he said, still gazing at her face.

He threw back his head, and his great throat showed among the folds of
muslin that swept down to his mighty chest.

"He knows!"

"Knows! Who has told him?"

"I have!"

As he looked at her, she grew quite cold, as if she had been plunged
into icy water.

"You have told him about me?" he said.

"Not all about you! But he knows that--that I made him ill, that I
wished him to die. I told him, because I wanted to get away. I had to
get away--and be with you...."

The bracelets on the arms of the Eastern girl jingled as she moved
behind Mrs. Armine.

"Send her away! Send her away!" Mrs. Armine rep