carpeted and having its walls covered with a kind of matting kept in place by strips of bamboo. Its roof was similarly concealed. A door near to the end, and on the right, proved to open into a square room quite simply furnished in the manner of a bed-sitting room. A little bathroom opened out of it in one corner. The walls were distempered white, and there was no window. Light was furnished by an electric lamp, hanging from the center of the ceiling.
Soames, glancing at his bag, which Said had just placed beside the white-enameled bedstead, turned to his impassive guide.
“This is a funny go!” he began, with forced geniality. “Am I to live here?”
“Ma’lêsh!” muttered Said—“ma’lêsh!”
He indicated, by gestures, that Soames should remove his collar; he was markedly unemotional. He crossed to the bathroom, and could be heard filling the hand-basin with water.
“Kûrsi!” he called from within.
Soames, seriously doubting his own sanity, and so obsessed with a sense of the unreal that his senses were benumbed, began to take off his collar; he could not feel the contact of his fingers with his neck in the act. Collarless, he entered the little bathroom.…
“Kûrsi!” repeated Said; then: “Ah! ana nesît! ma’lêsh!”
Said—whilst Soames, docile in his stupor,
