She loved that.

He had greeted her on that first evening with a song about Allah.  Her mind, moving quickly from thought to thought, now alighted upon that remembrance, and immediately she recollected Hamza and his prayer, and she wondered how strong was the belief in Allah of the ruthless being beside her.

“They sang a song about Allah,” she said, slowly.  “Allah was the only word I could understand.”

Baroudi raised himself up a little more, and, staring into her face, he opened his lips, and, in a loud and melancholy voice, sang the violent, syncopated tune the Nubian boatmen love.  The hot yellow rocks around them seemed to act as a sounding-board to his voice.  Its power was surely unnatural, and, combined with his now expressionless face, made upon her an effect that was painful.  Nevertheless, it allured her.  When he was silent, she murmured: 

“Yes, it was that.”

He said nothing, and his absolute silence following upon his violent singing strengthened the grip of his strangeness upon her.  Only a little while ago she had felt, had even known, that she and Baroudi understood one another as Nigel and she could never understand one another.  Now suddenly she felt a mystery in Baroudi far deeper, far more impenetrable, than any mystery that dwelt in Nigel.  This mystery seemed to her to be connected with his belief in an all-powerful God, in some Being outside of the world, presiding over its destinies, ordering all the fates which it contained.  And whereas the belief of her husband, which she divined and was often sharply conscious of, moved her to a feeling of irony such as may be felt by a naturally sardonic person when hearing the naive revelations of a child, the faith of Baroudi fascinated her, and moved her almost to a sensation of awe.  It was like a fire which burnt her, and like an iron door which shut against her.

Yet he had never spoken of it; he did not speak of it now.  But he had sung the song of Nubia.

“Did you tell Ibrahim that he was to choose Hamza as my donkey-boy to-day?” she said.

She was still preoccupied, still she seemed to see Hamza running beside her towards the mountains, praying among the rocks.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Hamza is a very good donkey-boy.”

In that moment Mrs. Armine began to feel afraid of Hamza, even afraid of his prayers.  That was strangely absurd, she knew, because she believed in nothing.  Baroudi now let himself sink down a little, and rested his cheek upon his hand.  Somewhere he had learnt the secret of European postures.  There had been depths of strangeness in his singing.  There was a depth of strangeness in his demeanour.  He had greeted her from the Nile by night when he was far away in Alexandria; he had ordered Ibrahim and Hamza to bring her into this solitary place, and now he lay beside her with his strong body at rest, and his mind, apparently, lost in some vagrant reverie, not heeding her, not making any effort to please her, not even—­so it seemed to her now—­thinking about her.  Why was she not piqued, indignant?  Why was she even actually charmed by his indifference?