“What are they really?” she thought now, as she heard them talking.

She could not tell, but at least there was in this air a scent of spices, a sharp and aromatic savour.  And she had been—­perhaps would be again—­a reckless woman.  She loved the aromatic savour.  It made her feel as if, despite her many experiences, she had lived till now perpetually in a groove; as if she had known far less of life than she had hitherto supposed.

They gained the edge of the orange-grove, passed between it and the Nile, and came presently to a broad earth-track, which led to the right.  Along this they went, and reached a house that stood in the very midst of the grove, in a delicious solitude, a very delicate calm.  From about it on every hand stretched away the precisely ordered rows of small, umbrageous, already fruit-bearing trees, not tall, with narrow stems, forked branches, shining leaves, among which the round balls, some green, some in the way of becoming gold, a few already gold, hung in masses that looked artificial because so curiously decorative.  The breeze that had filled the sails of the felucca had either died down or was the possession of the river.  For here stillness reigned.  In a warm silence the fruit was ripening to bring gold to the pockets of Baroudi.  The wrinkled earth beneath the trees was a dark grey in the shade, a warmer hue, in which pale brown and an earthy yellow were mingled, where the sunlight lay upon it.

Mrs. Armine got down before the house, which was painted a very faint pink, through which white seemed trying to break.  It had only one storey.  A door of palm-wood in the facade was approached by two short flights of steps, descending on the right and left of a small terrace.  At this door Baroudi now appeared, dressed in a suit of flannel, wearing the tarbush, and holding in his hand a great palm-leaf fan.  Hamza led away the donkey, going round to the back of the house.  Ibrahim followed him.  Mrs. Armine went slowly up the steps and joined Baroudi on the terrace.

He did not speak, and she stood by his side in silence for a moment, looking into the orange-grove.  The world seemed planted with the beautiful little trees, the almost meretricious, carefully nurtured, and pampered belles of their tribe.  And their aspect of artificiality, completely—­indeed, quite wonderfully—­effective, gave a thrill of pleasure to something within her.  They were like trees that were perfectly dressed.  Since the day when she first met Baroudi in the mountains she had resumed her practice of making up her face.  Marie might be wrong, although Baroudi was not a Frenchman.  Today Mrs. Armine was very glad that she had not trusted completely to Nature.  In the midst of these orange trees she felt in place, and now she lifted her veil and she spoke to Baroudi.

“What do you call this?  Has it a name?”

“It is the Villa Nuit d’Or.  I use the word ‘villa’ in the Italian sense.”