The night wind rose again, drowning the little notes of the desert lute.

* * * * *

That night, without being aware of it, Mrs. Armine crossed a Rubicon.  She crossed it when she came out of the big tent into the sands to go back to the camp by the lake.  While she had been with Baroudi the sky had partially cleared.  Above the tents and the blazing fire some stars shone out benignly.  A stillness and a pellucid clearness that were full of remote romance were making the vast desert their sacred possession.  The aspect of the camp had changed.  It was no longer a lurid and mysterious assemblage of men, animals, and tents, half revealed in the light of blown flames, half concealed by the black mantle of night, but a tranquil and restful picture of comfort and of repose, full of the quiet detail of feeding beasts, and men smoking, sleeping, or huddling together to tell the everlasting stories and play the games of draughts that the Arabs love so well.

But blackness and gusty storm were within her, and made the vision of this desert place, governed by the huge calm of the immersing night in this deep hour of rest, almost stupefying by its contrast with herself.

Baroudi had gone out first to speak with Ibrahim.  She saw him, made unusually large and imposing by the ample robes he wore, the innumerable folds of muslin round his head, stride slowly across the sand and mingle with his attendants, who all rose up as he joined them.  For a moment she stood quite still just beyond the shadow of the tent.

The exquisitely cool air touched her, to make her know that she was on fire.  The exquisite clearness fell around her, to make her realize the misty confusion of her soul.  She trembled as she stood there.  Not only her body, but her whole nature was quivering.

And then she heard again the player upon the lute, and she saw a faint ray of light upon the sand by the tent she had not entered.  She buttoned her fur jacket, twisted her gloves in her hands, and looked towards the ray.  There was a hard throbbing in her temples, and just beneath her shoulders there came a sudden shock of cold, that was like the cold of menthol.  She looked again at the camp fire; then she stole over the sand, set her feet on the ray, and waited.

For the first time she realized that she was afraid of Baroudi, that she would shrink from offending him almost as a dog shrinks from offending its master.  But would it anger him if she saw the lute-player?  He had not taken the trouble to silence that music.  He treated women de haut en bas.  That was part of his fascination for them—­at any rate, for her.  What would he care if she knew he had a woman with him in the camp, if she saw the woman?