"What is the meaning of that Arabic writing, Mahmoud Baroudi?" said Mrs. Armine on the following afternoon, as she stood with him and her husband upon the lower deck of the Loulia, at the foot of the two steps which led down to the big door dividing the lines of living-rooms from the quarters of the Nubian sailors. The door was white, with mouldings of gold, and the inscription above it was in golden characters.

"It looks so significant that I must know what it means," she added.

"It is taken from the Koran, madame."

"And it means?"

He fixed his great eyes upon her.

"'The fate of every man have we bound about his neck.'"

"'The fate of every man have we bound about his neck,'" she repeated, slowly. "So that is the motto for the Loulia!"

She was standing quite still, staring up at the cabalistic signs beneath which she was going to pass.

"Do you dislike it, madame?"

"No, it's strong, but—well, it leaves no loophole for escape, and it rather suggests a prison."

"We are in the prison of our lives, and we are in the prison of ourselves," he answered, calmly.

She dropped her eyes from the words.

"Yes?" she said, looking at him like one who asks for more.

"Prison!" said Nigel, behind her. "I hate that word. You're wrong, Baroudi. Life is a fine freedom, if we choose it to be so, and we can act in it according to our own free-will. Our fate is not bound about our necks. It is only we ourselves who can bind it there."

"All that is not at all in my belief," returned Baroudi, inflexibly. "Here are cabins for servants."

He led them into a passage, and pointed to little doors on the right and left.

"And here is my room for working and arranging all I have to do. I believe you English call it a 'den.'"

He opened a door that faced them at the end of the passage, and preceded them into his "den." The effect of this chamber was that it was a "double room," for an exquisite screen of mashrebeeyeh work, in the centre of which was a small round arch, divided it into two compartments. On each side of this arch, facing the entrance door, were divans covered with embroideries and heaped with enormous cushions. Prayer-rugs covered the floor, prayer-rugs of very varied patterns and colours, on which yellows, greens, mauves, pinks, reds, purples, and browns dwelt in perfect accord; on which vases were seen with trees, lamps with flowers, strange and conventional buildings with ships, with chains, with pedestals, with baskets of fruit, mingled together, apparently at haphazard, yet forming a blend that was restful. By the windows there were lattices of mashrebeeyeh work, which could be opened and closed at will. At present they were open. Beneath them were fitted book-cases containing rows of books, in English and French, many of them works on agriculture, on building, on mining, on the sugar and cotton industries in various parts of the world. There was a large writing-table of lacquer-work, on which stood a movable electric lamp without a shade, in the midst of a rummage of pamphlets and papers. Near it were a coffee-table and two deep arm-chairs. From the ceiling, which was divided into compartments painted in dark red and blue, hung a heavy lamp by a chain of gilded silver. A stick of incense burned in a gilded holder. The dining-room, on the other side of the screen, was fitted with divans running round the walls, and contained a large table and a number of chairs with curved backs. The table was covered with a long and exquisitely embroidered Indian cloth, of which the prevailing colour was a brilliant orange-red, that glowed and had a sheen which was almost fiery. In the centre of this table stood a tawdry Japanese vase, worth, perhaps, five or six shillings. A lovely bracket of carved wood fixed to the wall held a cheap cuckoo-clock from Switzerland.

Mrs. Armine looked around in silence, with eyes that missed no detail. The clock whirred, a minute door flew open, the cuckoo appeared, and the two notes that are the cry of the English spring went thinly out to the Nile. Then the cuckoo disappeared, and the little door shut sharply.

Mrs. Armine smiled.

"You bought that?" she asked.

"Yes, madame. Everything here was bought by me, and arranged according to my poor judgment."

He opened the door, and led them into a long passage with a shining parquetted floor.

"Here are the bedrooms, madame."

He pushed back two or three doors, showing beautiful little cabins, evidently furnished from Paris, with bedsteads, mosquito-curtains, long mirrors, small arm-chairs in white, and green and rose-colour; walls painted ivory-white; and delicate, pretty, but rather frivolous, curtains and portiÈres, with patterns of flowers tied up with ribands, and flying and perching birds. All the toilet arrangements were perfect, and each room had a recess in which was a large enamelled bath.

"That is my bedroom, madame," said Baroudi, pointing to a door which he did not open. "It is the largest on the boat. And here is my room for sitting alone. When I want to be disturbed by no one, when I want to smoke the keef, to eat the hashish, or just to sit by myself and forget my affairs, and dream quietly for a little, I shut myself in here."

An embroidered curtain, the ground of which was orange colour, covered with silks of various hues, faced them at the end of the corridor. Baroudi pulled aside this curtain, pushed back a sliding door of wood that was almost black, and said:

"Will you go in first, madame?"

Mrs. Armine stepped in, with an almost cautious slowness.

She found herself in a large saloon, which took in the whole width of the stern of the dahabeeyah. The end of this saloon widened out and was crescent-shaped, and contained a low dais with curving divans, divided by two sliding doors which were now pushed back in their recesses, giving access to a big balcony that looked out over the Nile and that was protected by an awning. The wooden ceiling was cut up into lozenges of black and gold, and was edged by minute inscriptions from the Koran, in gold on a black ground. All the windows had lattices of mashrebeeyeh work fitted to them, and all these lattices were closed. Against the walls, which were as dark in colour as the mashrebeeyeh work, there were a number of carved brackets, on which were placed various extremely common things—cheap and gaudy vases from Naples and Paris, two more Swiss cuckoo-clocks, a third clock with a blue and white china face—and a back that looked as if were made of brass, a musical-box, and a grotesque monster, like a dragon with a dog's head, in rough yellow and blue earthenware. There were no chairs in the room, though there were some made of basket-work on the balcony, but all the lower part of the wall space was filled with broad divans. In the centre of the floor there was a sunken receptacle of marble, containing earth, in which dwarf palms were growing, and a faskeeyeh, or little fountain, which threw up a minute jet of water, upon which airily rose and fell a gilded ball about the size of a pea. All over the floor were strewn exquisite rugs. The room was pervaded by a faint but heavy perfume, which had upon the senses an almost narcotic effect.

"What a strange room!" said Mrs. Armine.

She had stood quite still near the door. Now she walked forward, followed by the two men, until she had passed the faskeeyeh and had reached the foot of the dais. There she turned round, with her back to the light that came in through the narrow doorways leading to the balcony. Baroudi had shut the door by which they had come in, and had pulled over it a heavy orange-coloured curtain, which she now saw for the first time. Although lovely in itself both in colour and material, fiercely lovely, like the skin of some savage beast, it did not blend with the rest of the room, with the dim hues of the superb embroideries and prayer-rugs, with the dark wood of the lattices that covered the windows. Like the cheap clocks on the exquisite brackets, and the vulgar ornaments from Naples and Paris, it seemed to reveal a certain childishness in this man, a bad taste that was naÏve in its crudity, but daring in its determination to be gratified. Oddly, almost violently, this curtain, these clocks and vases, the musical-box, even the tiny gilded ball that rose and fell in the fountain, displayed a part of him strangely different from that which had selected the almost miraculously beautiful rugs, and the embroideries on the divans. Exquisite taste was married with a commonness that was glaring.

Mrs. Armine wished she could see his bedroom.

"I wish—" she began, and stopped.

"Yes, madame?" said Baroudi.

"What is it, Ruby?" asked Nigel.

"You'll laugh at me. But I wish you would both go out upon the balcony, shut the doors, and leave me for a minute shut up alone in here. I think I should feel as if I were in the heart of an Eastern house."

"In a harÎm, do you mean?" asked Nigel.

"That—perhaps. Do go."

Baroudi smiled, showing his rows of tiny teeth.

"Come, Mr. Armeen!" he said.

He stepped out on to the balcony, followed by Nigel, and pulled out from the recess the first of the sliding doors.

"You really wish the other, too?" he asked, looking in upon Mrs. Armine. "You will be quite in the dark."

"Shut it!" she said, in a low voice.

He pulled out the second door. Gently it slid across the oblong of sunlight, blotting out the figures of the two men from her sight. Baroudi had said that she would be quite in the dark. That was not absolutely true. How and from where she could not determine, a very faint suggestion—it was hardly more than that—of light stole in to show the darkness to her. She went to the divan on the starboard side of the vessel, felt for some cushions, piled them together, and lay down, carefully, so as not to disarrange her hat. The divan was soft and yielding. It held and caressed her body, almost as if it were an affectionate living thing that knew of her present desire. The cushions supported her arm as she lay sideways—listening, and keeping perfectly still.

She had some imagination, although she was not a highly or a very sensitively imaginative woman, and now she left her imagination at play. It took her with it into the heart of an Eastern house which was possessed by an Eastern master. Where was the house, in what strange land of sunshine? She did not know or care to know. And indeed, it mattered little to her—an Eastern woman whose life was usually bounded by a grille.

For she imagined herself an Eastern woman, subject to the laws and the immutable customs of the unchanging East, and she was in the harÎm of a rich Oriental, to whom she belonged body and soul, and who adored her, but as the man of the East adores the woman who is both his mistress and his slave. For years she had ruled men, and trodden them under her feet. She had lived for that—the ruling of men by her beauty and her clever determination. Now she imagined herself no longer possessing but entirely possessed; no longer commanding, but utterly obedient. What a new experience that would be! All the capricious womanhood of her seemed to be alert and tingling at the mere thought of it. Instead of having slaves, to be herself a slave!

She moved a little on the divan. The heavy perfume that pervaded the room seemed to be creeping about her with an intention—to bring her under its influence. She heard the very faint and liquid murmur of the faskeeyeh, where the tiny gilded ball was rising, poising, sinking, governed by the aspiring and subsiding water. That, too, was a slave—a slave in the Eastern house of Baroudi.

Slowly she closed her eyes, in the Eastern house of Baroudi.

Here Baroudi lay, as she was lying, and smoked the keef, and ate the hashish, and dreamed.

He would never be the slave of a woman. She felt sure of that. But he might make a woman his slave. At moments, when he looked at her, he had the eyes of a slave-owner. But he might adore a slave with a cruel adoration. She felt cruelty in him, and it attracted her, it lured her, it responded to something in her nature which understood and respected cruelty, and which secretly despised gentleness. In his love he would be cruel. Never would he be quite at the feet of the woman. His eyes had told her that, had told it to her with insolence.

The gilded ball in the faskeeyeh, the slave covered with jewels in the harÎm.

She stretched out her arms along the cushions; she stretched out her limbs along the divan, her long limbs that were still graceful and supple.

How old did Baroudi think her?

Arabs never know their ages. A man, a soldier whom she had known, had told her that once, had told her that Arabs of sixty declare themselves to be twenty-five, not from vanity, but merely because they never reckon the years. Baroudi would probably never think of her as Englishmen thought of her, would never "bother about" her age. She had seen no criticism of that kind in his eyes when they stared at her. Probably he believed her to be quite young, if he thought of her age at all. More probably he did not think about the matter.

She was in the Eastern house of Baroudi.

When she and Nigel had left London for Egypt she had imagined herself one day, if not governing London—the "London" that had once almost worshipped her beauty—at least spurning it as Lady Harwich. She had wrapped herself in that desire, that dream. All her thoughts had been connected with London, with people there. Some day Lord Harwich would die or get himself killed. Zoe Harwich would sink reluctantly into "Zoe, Lady Harwich," and she, once the notorious Mrs. Chepstow, would be mistress of Harwich House, Park Lane; of Illington Park, near Ascot; of Goldney Chase in Derbyshire; of Thirlton Castle in Scotland; and of innumerable shooting-lodges, to say nothing of houses at Brighton and Newmarket. Society might not receive her, but society would have to envy her. And perhaps—in the end—for are not all things possible in the social world of to-day?—perhaps in the end she would impose herself, she would be accepted again because of her great position. She had felt that her cleverness and her force of will made even that possible. Harwich's letter had swept the dream away, and now, the first shock of her new knowledge passed, though not the anger, the almost burning sense of wrong that had followed immediately upon it, she was characteristically readjusting her point of view upon her future. She had schemed for a certain thing; she had taken the first great step towards the realization of her scheme; and then she had suddenly come upon catastrophe. And now her thoughts began to turn away from London. The London thoughts were dying with the London hopes. "All that is useless now." That was what her mind was saying, bitterly, but also with decision. Schooled by a life filled with varying experiences, Mrs. Armine had learnt one lesson very thoroughly—she had learnt to cut her losses. How was she going to cut this loss?

She was in the Eastern house of Baroudi.

Only a few hours ago she had looked out upon Egypt and things Egyptian almost as a traveller looks upon a world through which he is rushing in a train, a world presented to him for a brief moment, but with whose inhabitants he will never have anything to do, in whose life he will never take part. She had to be in Egypt for a while, but all her desires and hopes and intentions were centred in London. There her destiny would be played out, there and in the land of which London was the beating heart.

Now she must centre her desires, her hopes, her intentions elsewhere, if she centred them anywhere. She must centre them upon Nigel, must centre them in the Fayyūm, in the making of crops to grow where only sand had been, both in the Fayyūm and in another place, or she must centre them—

She smelt the heavy perfume; she smoothed the silken pillows with her long fingers; she stretched her body on the soft divan; she listened to the liquid whisper of the faskeeyeh.

There were many sorts of lives in the world. She had had many experiences, but how many experiences she had never had! No longer did she feel herself to be a traveller rushing onward through a land of which she would never know, or care to know, anything. The train was slackening speed. She saw the land more clearly. Details came into view, making their strange and ardent appeal. The train would presently stop. And she would step out of it, would face the new surroundings, would face the novel life.

Suddenly she distended her nostrils to inhale the perfume more strongly, her hands closed upon the silken cushions with a grip that was almost angry, and something within her, the something that tries to command from its secret place, scourged her imagination to force it to more violent efforts—in the Eastern house of Baroudi.

"Ruby! Ruby!"

One of the sliding doors was pushed back, the sunlight came in, tempered by the shade thrown by the awning, and she saw the little ball dancing in the faskeeyeh, and her husband looking inquiringly upon her, framed in the oblong of the doorway.

"What on earth are you doing?"

"Nothing!" she said, sitting up with a brusque movement.

He laughed.

"I believe you were taking a nap."

She got up.

"To tell the truth, I was almost asleep."

She stood up, put her hands to her hat, to her hair, and with a slight but very intelligent movement sent the skirt of her gown into place.

"Let me out," she said.

Nigel drew back, and she stepped out upon the balcony, where Baroudi was leaning upon the railing, looking over the sunlit Nile. He turned round slowly and very calmly to meet her, moving with the almost measured ease of the very supple and strong man, drew forward a basket chair, arranged a cushion for her politely, but rather carelessly, and not at all cleverly, and said, as she sat down:

"You like the heart of my Eastern house?"

"How do you manage the fountain?" she asked.

He embarked upon a clear and technical explanation, but when he had said a very few words, she stopped him.

"Please don't! You are spoiling my whole impression. I oughtn't to have asked."

"Baroudi is a very practical man," said Nigel. "I only wish I had him as my overseer in the Fayyūm."

"If I can ever give you advice I shall be very glad," said Baroudi. "I know all about agriculture in my country."

Mrs. Armine leaned back, and looked at the broad river, upon which there were many native boats creeping southward with outspread sails, at the columns of the great Temple of Luxor standing up boldly upon the eastern bank, at the cloud of palm-trees northward beyond the village, at the far-off reaches of water, at the bare and precipitous hills that keep the deserts of Libya. At all these features of the landscape she looked with eyes that seemed to be new.

"Talk about agriculture to my husband, Mahmoud Baroudi," she said. "Forget I am here, both of you."

"But—"

"Pas de compliments! This is my first visit to a dahabeeyah. Your Nile is making me dream. If only the sailors were singing!"

"They shall sing."

He went up a few steps, and looked over the upper deck; then he called out some guttural words. Almost instantly the throb of the daraboukkeh was audible, and then a nasal cry: "Al-lah!"

"And now—talk about agriculture!"

Baroudi turned away to Nigel, and began to talk to him in a low voice, while Mrs. Armine sat quite still, always watching the Nile, and always listening to the sailors singing. Presently tea was brought, but even then she preserved, smiling, her soft but complete detachment.

"Go on talking," she said. "You don't know how happy I am."

She looked at her husband, and added:

"I am drinking Nile water to-day."

Into his face there came a strong look of joy, which stirred irony in the deeps of her nature. He did not say anything to her, but in a moment he renewed his conversation with Baroudi, energetically, vivaciously, with an ardour which she had deliberately given him, partly out of malice, but partly also to gain for herself a longer lease of tranquillity. For she had spoken the truth. She was drinking Nile water to-day, and she wanted to drink more deeply.

The river was like a dream, she thought. The great boats, with their lateen sails and their grave groups of silent brown men, crept noiselessly by like the vessels that pass in a dream. Against the sides of the Loulia she heard the Nile water whispering softly, whispering surely to her. From the near bank, mingling with the loud and nasal song of the Nubian sailors, rose the fierce and almost tragic songs of the fellahÎn working the shadÛfs. How many kinds of lives there were in the world!

The blow that had fallen upon Mrs. Armine had made her unusually thoughtful, unusually introspective, unusually sensitive to all influences from without; had left her vibrating like a musical instrument that had been powerfully struck by a ruthless hand. The gust of fury that had shaken her had stirred her to a fierce and powerful life, had roused up all her secret energies of temper, of will of desire, all her greed to get the best out of life, to wring dry, as it were, of their golden juices every one of the fleeting years. "To-morrow we die." Those who believe that, as she believed it, desire to live as no believer in a prolonged future in other worlds can ever desire to live—here, for the little day—and never had she felt that hungry wish more than she felt it now. Through her dream she felt it, almost as a victim of ardent pain feels that pain, without suffering under it, after an injection of morphia. If she could not have the life to which she had looked forward of triumph in England, she must have in its place some other life that suited her special temperament, some other life that would answer to the call within her for material satisfactions, for strong bodily pleasures, for the joys of the pagan, the unbeliever, who is determined to "make the most of" the short span of human life on earth.

How could she now have that other life with Nigel? He would never be Lord Harwich. He would never be anything but Nigel Armine, a man of moderate means interested in Egyptian agriculture, with a badly let property in England, and a strip of desert in the Fayyūm. He would never be anything except that—and her husband, the man who had "let her in." She did not mentally add to the tiny catalogue—"and the man who loved her."

For a long while she sat quite still, leaning her head on the cushion, hearing the singing and crying voices, the perpetual whisper of the water against the Loulia's sides, watching the gleaming Nile and the vessels that crept upon it going towards the south; and now, for the first time, there woke in her a desire to follow them up the river, to sail, too, into the golden south. Instead of the longing to return to and reign in England, came the desire to push England out of her life, almost to kick it away scornfully and have done with it for ever. Since she could never reign in England, she felt that she hated England.

"In the summer? Oh, I always spend the summer in England."

Nigel was speaking cheerfully. She began to attend to his conversation with Baroudi, but she still looked out to the Nile, and did not change her position. They were really talking about agriculture, and apparently with enthusiasm. Nigel was giving details of his efforts in the Fayyūm. Now they discussed sand-ploughs. It seemed an unpromising subject, but they fell upon it with ardour, and found it strangely fruitful. Even Baroudi seemed to be deeply interested in sand-ploughs. Mrs. Armine forgot the Nile. She was not at all interested in sand-ploughs, but she was interested in this other practical side of Baroudi, which was now being displayed to her. Very soon she knew that of all these details connected with land, its cultivation, the amount of profit it could be made to yield in a given time, the eventual probabilities of profit in a more distant future, he was a master. And Nigel was talking to him, was listening to him, as a pupil talks and listens to a master. The greedy side of Mrs. Armine was very practical, as Meyer Isaacson had realized, and therefore she was fitted to appreciate at its full value the practical side of Baroudi. She felt that here was a man who knew very well how and where to tap the streams whose waters are made of gold, and, as romance seduces many women, so, secretly, this powerful money-making aptitude seduced her temperament, or an important part of it. She was fascinated by this aptitude, but presently she was still more fascinated by the subtle use that he was making of it.

He was deliberately rousing up Nigel's ambitions connected with labour, was deliberately stinging him to activity, deliberately prompting him to a sort of manly shame at the thought of his present life of repose. But he was doing it with an apparent carelessness that was deceptive and very subtle; he was doing it by talking about himself, and his own energy, and his own success, not conceitedly, but simply, and in connection with Nigel's plans and schemes and desires.

Why was he doing this? Did he want to send Nigel to spend the winter in the Fayyūm? And did he know that Nigel intended to "rig up something" in the Fayyūm for her?