gracefully forward, smiling and almost hanging his head, as if in
half-roguish deprecation.

"What did you say your name was?" Mrs. Armine asked him.

He took the flower from his teeth, handed it to her, then took her hand,
kissed it, bent his forehead quite low, and pressed her hand against it.

"Ibrahim Ahmed, my lady."

She looked at his gold-coloured robe, at his European jacket, at the
green and gold fringed handkerchief which he had wound about his
tarbush, and which covered his throat and fell down upon his breast.

"Very pretty," she said, approvingly. "But I don't like the jacket. It
looks too English."

"It is a present from London, my lady."

"Al-lah--"

Always the sailors' song seemed growing louder, more vehement, more
insistent, like a strange fanaticism ever increasing in the bosom of the
night.

"Where are those people singing, Ibrahim?" said Mrs. Armine.

She put his flower in the front of her gown, opening her cloak to do so.

"They seem to get nearer and nearer. Are they coming down the river?"