over her, and, rejoicing, she came to the resolve of a vain woman.  She must exert all her will to keep with her this Indian summer.  She must school her nature, govern her passions, drill her mind to accept with serenity what was to come—­dulness, delay, the long fatigues of playing a part, the ennui of tent life, of this solitude a deux in the Fayyum.  She must not permit this opulence of beauty to be tarnished by the ravages of jealousy; for jealousy often destroys the beauty of women, turns them into haggard witches.  But she would not succumb; for, in her creed beauty was everything to a woman, and the woman who had lost her beauty had ceased to count, was scarcely any more to be numbered among the living.  This sight and appreciation of herself suddenly seemed to arm her at all points.  Her depression, which had peopled the night with horrors and the morning with apprehensions, departed from her.  She was able to believe that the future held golden things, because she was able to believe in her own still immense attraction.

That day she contented Nigel, she fascinated him, she charmed him with her flow of animal spirits.  He could deny her nothing.  And when, laughingly, she begged him, as she had dispensed with a maid, to let her have her own special donkey-boy and donkey in the Fayyum, he was ready to acquiesce.

“We’ll take Mohammed, of course, if you wish,” he said, heartily, “though there are lots of donkey-boys to be got where we are going.”

“I’ve given up Mohammed,” she said.

He looked surprised.

“Have you?  What’s he done?”

“Nothing specially.  But I prefer Hamza.”

“The praying donkey-boy!”

“Yes.”

She paused; then, looking away from him, she said slowly: 

“There’s something strange to me and interesting about him.  I think it comes, perhaps, from his intense belief in his religion, his intense devotion to the Moslem’s faith.  I—­I can’t help admiring that, and I should like to take Hamza with us.  He’s so different from all the others.”

Then, with a changed and lighter tone, she added: 

“Besides, his donkey is the best on the river.  It comes from Syria, and is a perfect marvel.  Give me Hamza, his donkey, and Ibrahim as my suite, and you shall never hear a complaint from me, I promise you.”

“Of course you shall have them,” he said.  “I like the man to whom his beliefs mean something, even if they’re not mine and could never be mine.”

So the fate of Hamza and Ibrahim was very easily settled.

But when Nigel called Ibrahim, and told him that he had decided on taking him and Hamza to the Fayyum, and that he was to tell Hamza at once, Ibrahim looked a little doubtful.

“All what my gentleman want I do,” he said.  “But Hamza do much business in Luxor; I dunno if him come to the Fayyum.”

He glanced deprecatingly at Mrs. Armine.