And yet for many years she had not been a woman who had tried to play tricks with her own soul. This man was to have an effect not only upon the physical part of her, but also upon that in her which would not respond to tender attempts at influencing it towards goodness or any lofty morality, but which existed, a vital spark, incorporeal, the strange and wonderful thing in the cage of her ardent flesh.
And Mahmoud Baroudi? Was there any drama being acted behind the strong, but enigmatic, exterior which he offered to the examination of the world and of this woman?
Mrs. Armine sometimes wondered, and could not determine. She knew really little of him, for though he seemed often to be very carelessly displaying himself exactly as he was, at the close of each interview she went back to the villa with a mind not yet emptied of questions. She was often strangely at ease with him because he did not ask from her that which she could not give, and therefore she could be herself when with him. But the Eastern man does not pour confidences into the ear of the Western woman, nor are the workings of his mind like the workings of the mind of a Western man. Never till now had Mrs. Armine known a secret intimacy, or any intimacy, like this, procured by bribery, and surely hastening to a swift and decisive ending.
Upon the Hohenzollern Baroudi must have laid his plans to see her as he was seeing her now. He did not tell her so, but she knew it. Had she not known it upon ship-board? In their exchange of glances how much had been said and answered?
Despite her life of knowledge, she said to herself now that she did not know. And there was much in Baroudi's mind, even in connection with herself, that she could not possibly know.
Something about him, nevertheless, she was able to find out.
Baroudi's father was a rich Turco-Egyptian. His mother had been a beautiful Greek girl, who had embraced Islâm when his father fell in love with her and proposed to marry her. She assumed the burko, and vanished from the world into the harîm. And in the harîm she had eventually died, leaving this only son behind her.
The Turco-Egyptians are as a rule more virile, more active, more dominant, and perhaps more greedy than are the pure-bred Egyptians. In the days before the English protectorate they held many important positions among the ruling classes of Egypt. They lined their pockets well, plundering those in their power with the ruthlessness characteristic of the Oriental character. The English came and put a stop to their nefarious money-making. And even to-day love of the Englishman is far less common than hatred in the heart of a Turco-Egyptian. In the Turco-Egyptian nature there is, nevertheless, not seldom something that is more nearly akin to the typical Englishman's nature than could be found in the pure-bred Egyptian. And possibly because he sometimes sees in the Englishman what—but for certain Oriental characteristics that hold him back—he might almost become himself, the Turco-Egyptian often nourishes a peculiar venom against him. Men may hate because of ignorance, but they may hate also because of understanding.
Baroudi had been brought up in an atmosphere of Anglophobia. His father, though very rich, had lost place and power through the English. He had once had the upper hand with many of his countrymen. He had the upper hand no longer, would never have it again. The opportunity to plunder had been quietly taken from him by the men who wore the helmet instead of the tarbush, and who, while acknowledging that there is no god but God, deny that Mohammed was the Prophet of God. He hated the English, and he taught his half-Greek son to hate them, but never noisily or ostentatiously. And Baroudi learnt the lesson of his father quickly and very thoroughly. He grew up hating the English, and yet, paradoxically, developing a nature in which were certain characteristics, certain aptitudes, certain affections shared by the English.
He was no lethargic Eastern, unpractical, though deviously subtle, taking no thought for the morrow, uselessly imaginative, submissive, ready to cringe genuinely to authority, then turn and kick the man below him. He was no stagnant pool with only the iridescent lights of corruption upon it. Almost in the English sense he was thoroughly manly. He had the true instinct for sport, the true ability of the thorough sportsman. He was active. He had within him the faculty to command, to administrate, to organize. He had, like the Englishman, the assiduity that brings a work undertaken to a successful close. He had will as well as cunning, persistence as well as penetration. From his father he had inherited instincts of a conquering race—therefore akin to English instincts; from his mother, who had sprung from the lower classes, that extraordinary acquisitive faculty, that almost limitless energy, regardless of hardship, in the pursuit of gain which is characteristic of the modern Greek in Egypt.