To him that night they sang of God.

To her they sang of Mahmoud Baroudi.

XV

“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