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“No, indeed,” said Cecil, “that is not my ideal at all. A modification of their own style of dress would be much more suitable to them than a bad copy of ours. And they couldn’t all be learned, but they all ought to know a good deal more than they can at present, poor things! If they were only better educated, it would be much easier to introduce reforms Denarien Bey says that most of Ahmed Khémi Pasha’s plans are thwarted by his harem.”

Charlie groaned. “I beg your pardon, Miss Anstruther,” he said, “but my feelings were too much for me. An Eastern I can respect, a European I can pity, but a Europeanised, Europeanising Turk like Ahmed Khémi I can only detest.”

“I can’t hear my employer spoken against in that way,” said Cecil.

“Your employer? So he is. Well, Miss Anstruther, I can forgive him anything, since he is bringing you to Baghdad.”

Cecil frowned. “I really cannot imagine,” she said, severely, “how a person like yourself, who admires quiet so intensely, can talk so much.”

“That is the fault of the two natures in me,” said Charlie, gravely, though he was inwardly shaking with laughter over this amazing snub. “As a European, I am bound to talk and go on like other people, to be feverishly busy, and if I have no work of my own, to hunt up other people’s and set them at it. Then I get sick of it all, and go off and become an Eastern. Perfect idleness is then my highest idea of happiness, and I am quite content to sit for a whole day in the tent-door with an Arab sheikh, exchanging platitudes on the inevitability of the decrees of fate, at intervals of half an hour.”