"Not to-day, Ibrahim. To-day I want to be alone."
He inclined his long, thin body, and answered gravely:
"All what you want you must have, my lady."
"Don't call me 'my lady' to-day!" she exclaimed, with a sudden sharpness.
Ibrahim looked amazed and hurt.
"Never mind, Ibrahim!"—she touched her forehead—"I've got a bad head to-day, and it makes me cross about nothing."
He thrust one hand into his gold-coloured skirt, and produced a glass bottle full of some very cheap perfume from Europe.
"This will cure you, my la—mees. Rub it on your head. It is a bootiful stink. It stinks lovely indeed!"
She accepted it with a grateful smile, and he went pensively to order the tea; letting his head droop towards his left shoulder, and looking rather like a faithful dog that, quite unexpectedly, is not wanted by his mistress. Mrs. Armine sat still, frowning.
She could hear the Nubians of Baroudi singing as they bent to their mighty oars; not the song of Allah with which they had greeted her on her arrival, obedient perhaps to some message sent from Alexandria by their master, but a low and mysterious chaunt that was almost like a murmur from some spirit of the Nile, and that seemed strangely expressive of a sadness of the sun, as if even in the core of the golden glory there lurked a canker, like the canker of uncertainty that lies in the heart of all human joy.