"How could you let the brute do that?" she exclaimed, turning upon Baroudi. "How could you sit there and allow such a hateful thing?"
"But he came here to do it. He is one of the Saadeeyeh."
"He was going to do it even if I hadn't taken the serpent?"
"Of course."
"I don't believe that. He did it because he was angry with the serpent for not hurting me, for letting me take it."
"As you please," he said. "What does it matter?"
She glanced at him, and sat down. The expression in his eyes soothed her, the new look that she could read. Had it been called up by her courage with the serpent? She wondered if, by her impulsive action, she had grasped something in him which till now had seemed to elude her. Nevertheless, although her mood was changing, the sense of personal outrage had not completely died out of her.
"There really are other serpent eaters?" she asked.
"Of course. Saadees."
"And that man is one? But he hated my taking the serpent."
"But I did not hate it."
"No."
More strongly she felt that she had grasped something in him which had eluded her till now.
"Sit there for a minute quietly," he said, with a gentleness that, though far less boyish, recalled to her mind the smiling gentleness of Ibrahim. "And I will give you a new pleasure, and all your anger will go from you as the waves go from the Nile when the breeze has died away."
"What is it?"
His eyes were full of a sort of happy cunning like a child's.
"Sit there and you will know."
He went out of the room, and came back in a moment carrying a good-sized box carefully wrapped in silver paper. She began to think that he was going to give her another present, perhaps some wonderful jewel. But he undid the silver paper cautiously, opened a red-leather case, and displayed a musical box. After placing it tenderly upon the coffee-table, he bent down and set it going. There was a click, a slight buzzing, and then upon Mrs. Armine's enraptured ears there fell the strains of an old air from a forgotten opera of Auber's, "Come o'er the Moonlit Sea!"
The change from the Saadee's atmosphere of savage fanaticism to this mild and tinkling insipidity threw Mrs. Armine's nerves off their balance.
"Oh, Baroudi!" she said.
Her lips began to tremble. She turned away her head. The effort not to betray her almost hysterical amusement, which was combined with an intense desire to pet this great, robust child, almost suffocated her. There was a click. The music stopped.