"Oh—I see. But what a pity! Then you did not have the benefit of eating his marvellous plats."
"No. I don't care about that sort of thing."
"Really!"
They talked of other matters, but Nigel had lost all his bonhomie, and seemed unable to recover it.
Baroudi, like a good Mohammedan, declined to drink any wine, but when the fruit was brought, Mrs. Armine got up.
"I'll leave you for a little while," she said. "You'll find me on the terrace. Although Mahmoud Baroudi drinks nothing, I am sure he likes men's talk better than woman's chatter."
Baroudi politely but rather perfunctorily denied this.
"But what do you say," he added, "to coming as my guest to take a cup of coffee and a liqueur at the Winter Palace Hotel? To-night there is the first performance of a Hungarian band which I introduced last winter to Egypt, and which—I am told; I am not, perhaps, a judge of your Western music—plays remarkably. What do you say? Would it please you, madame?"
"Yes, do let us go. Shan't we go?"
She turned to Nigel.