“Why do you want her to go?” she asked slowly, with her eyes upon him.  “How can it matter to you whether my maid goes or stays?”

He only looked at her, opened his eyes widely, and laughed.  He took another cigarette, lit it, and laughed again quietly, but with surely a real enjoyment of her pretence of ignorance, of her transparent hypocrisy.  Nevertheless, she persisted.

“I can’t see what such a thing can possibly have to do with you, or why it should interest you at all.”

“I will find you a better maid.”

“Hamza—­perhaps?” she said.

“And why not Hamza?”

He looked at her, and was silent.  And again she felt a sensation of fear.  There was something deadly about the praying donkey-boy.

“When is that girl going?”

Mrs. Armine opened her lips to say, “She is not going at all.”  They said: 

“I intend to get rid of her within the next few days.  I always intended to get rid of her.”

“Yes?”

“She isn’t really a good maid.  She doesn’t understand my ways.”

“Or she understands them too well,” said Baroudi calmly, “When she is gone, I shall burn the alum upon the coals and give it to be eaten by a dog that is black.  That girl has the evil eye.”

XX

In the lodge in the garden of oranges, when the noon-tide was past and the land lay in the very centre of the gaze of the sun, Baroudi offered to Mrs. Armine an Egyptian dinner, or El-Ghada, served on a round tray of shining gold, which was set upon a low stool cased with tortoise-shell and ornamented with many small squares of mother-of-pearl.  When she and Baroudi came into the room where they were to eat, the tray was already in its place, set out with white silk napkins, with rounds of yellow bread, and with limes cut into slices.  The walls were hung with silks of shimmering green, and dull gold, and deep and sultry red.  Upon the floor were strewn some more of the marvellous rugs, of which Baroudi seemed to have an unlimited supply.  Round the room was the usual deep divan.  Incense burned in a corner.  Through a large window space, from which the hanging shutters were partially pushed back, Mrs. Armine saw a vista of motionless orange-trees.

She sat down on a pile of silken cushions which had been laid for her on the rugs.  As she arranged her skirt and settled herself, from an earthen drum just outside the house and an arghool there came a crude sound of native music, to which almost immediately added itself a high and quavering voice, singing: 

“Doos ya’ lellee!  Doos ya’ lellee!”