"Do you like me, Hamza?"
"Yes," he replied.
"You have been to Mecca, haven't you, with Mahmoud Baroudi?"
"Yes."
He muttered the word this time. His hands had been hanging at his sides, concealed in his loose sleeves, but now they were moved, and one went quickly up to his breast, and stayed there.
"What are you doing?" Mrs. Armine said, with a sudden sharpness; and, moved by an impulse she could not have explained, she seized the hand at his heart, and pulled it towards her. By the light of the young moon she saw that it was grasping tightly a sort of tassel made of cowries which hung round his neck by a string. He covered the shells with his fingers, and showed his teeth. She let his hand go.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Yes," he answered.
She turned and went into the tent, and he flitted away like a shadow.
That night, when Nigel came in from Sennoures, she said to him: