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 naive 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.