What his intention was she did not know, but he could not have said anything to her at that moment that would have struck more rudely upon her sensuous pleasure in the change one step had brought her.  His words instantly put before her the necessity for going presently, very soon, back to the camp and Nigel, and they woke up in her the secret woman, the woman who still retained the instincts of a lady.  This lady realized, almost as Eve realized her nakedness, the humiliation of that rush through the night from one camp to another, the humiliation that lay in the fact that it was she who sought the man, that he had her brought to him, did not trouble to come to her.  She reddened beneath the paint on her face, turned swiftly round, bent down, and tried to undo the canvas flap of the tent.  Her intention was to go out, to call Ibrahim, to leave the camp at once.  But her hands trembled and she could not undo the canvas.  Still bending, she struggled with it.  She heard no movement behind her.  Was Baroudi calmly waiting for her to go?  Some one must have pegged the flap down after she had come in.  She would have to kneel down on the carpet to get at the fastenings.  It seemed to her, in her nervous anger and excitement, that to kneel in that tent would be a physical sign of humiliation; nevertheless, after an instant of hesitation, she sank to the ground and pushed her hands forcibly under the canvas, feeling almost frantically for the ropes.  She grasped something, a rope, a peg—­she did not know what—­and pulled and tore at it with all her force.

Just then the night wind, which blew waywardly over the sands, now rising in a gust that was almost fierce, now dying away into a calm that was almost complete, failed suddenly, and she heard a frail sound which, by its very frailty, engaged all her attention.  It was a reiteration of the sound which she thought she had heard as she waited outside the tent, and this time she was no longer in doubt.  It was the cry of an instrument of music, a stringed instrument of some kind, plucked by demure fingers.  The cry was repeated.  A whimsical Eastern melody, very delicate and pathetic, crept to her from without.

It suggested to her—­women.

Her hands became inert, and her fingers dropped from the tent-pegs.  She thought of the other tent, of the smaller tent she had seen, standing apart near Baroudi’s.  Who was living in that tent?

The melody went on, running a wayward course.  It might almost be a bird’s song softly trilled in some desolate place of the sands, but—­

It died away into the night, and the night wind rose again.

Mrs. Armine got up from her knees.  Her hands were trembling no longer.  She no longer wished to go.

“Arrange some of those cushions for me, Baroudi,” she said.  “I am tired after my ride.”

He had not moved from where he had been standing when she came in, but she noticed that his long pipe had dropped from his hand and was lying on the carpet.