As she ate it, she shut her eyes.
"And now tell me—have you made a plan about the Loulia?" she said.
His face, as he looked at her, was a refusal to reply, and so it was not a denial.
"Live for the day as it comes," he said, "and do not think about to-morrow."
"That is my philosophy. But when you are thinking about to-morrow?"
Again she thought of Hamza, and she seemed to see those two, Baroudi and Hamza, starting together on the great pilgrimage. From it, perhaps made more believing or more fanatical, they had returned—to step into her life.
"Do you know," she said, "that either you, or something in Egypt, is—is—"
"What?" he asked, with apparent indifference.
"Is having an absurd effect upon me."
She laughed, with difficulty, frowned, sighed, while he steadily watched her. At that moment something within her was struggling, like a little, anxious, active creature, striving fiercely, minute though it was, to escape out of a trap. It seemed to her that it was the introduction of Hamza into her life by Baroudi that was furtively distressing her.