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 harim, 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 harim 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.