“Do you think so?” she said.  “I doubt it.  I’m not sure that I shall spend another winter in Egypt.”

His eyes became more sombre, looked suddenly as if even their material weight must have increased.

“That is known, but not to you,” he said.

“And not to you!” she said, with a sudden sharpness, very womanly and modern.

With a quick and supple movement he was beside her, stretching his length upon the ground in the shadow of the mountain.  He turned slightly to one side, raising himself up a little on one strong arm, and keeping in that position without any apparent effort.

“Please don’t try the old hypnotic fakir tricks upon me, Baroudi,” she added, pushing up the cushions against the rock behind her.  “I know quantities of hysterical European women make fools of themselves out here, but I am not hysterical, I assure you.”

“No, you are practical, as I am, and something else—­as I am.”

He bent back his head a little.  The movement showed her his splendid throat, which seemed to announce all the concentrated strength that was in him—­a strength both calm and fiery, not unlike that of the rocks, like petrified flames which hemmed them in.

“Something else?  What is it?”

“Why do women so often ask questions to which they know the answers?  Here is Ibrahim with our coffee.”

At this moment, indeed, Ibrahim came slowly from behind the rocky barrier, carrying coffee-cups, sugar, and a steaming brass coffee-pot on a tray.  Without speaking a word, he placed the tray gently upon the ground, filled the cups, handed them to Mrs. Armine and Baroudi, and went quietly away.  He had not looked at Mrs. Armine.

And she had thought of Ibrahim as just a gentle and amiable boy!

Could all these people read her mind and follow the track of her distastes and desires, even the dragomans and the donkey-boys?  For an instant she felt as if the stalwart Englishmen, the governing race, whom she knew so well, were only children—­short-sighted and frigid children—­that these really submissive Egyptians, Baroudi, Ibrahim, and the praying Hamza, were crafty and hot-blooded men with a divinatory power.

“Your coffee,” said Baroudi, handing to her a cup.

She drank a little, put down the cup, and said: 

“The first night we were at the Villa Androud your Nubian sailors came up the Nile and sang just underneath the garden.  Why did they do that?”

“Because they are my men, and had my orders to sing to you.”

“And Ibrahim—­and Hamza?” she asked.

“They had my orders to bring you here.”

“Yes,” she said.

She was silent for an instant.

“Yes; of course they had your orders.”

As she spoke a hot wave of intimate satisfaction seemed to run all over her.  From Alexandria this man had greeted her on the first evening of her new life beside the Nile.  He had greeted her then, and now he had surely insulted her.  He acknowledged calmly that he had treated her as a chattel.