There were half-a-dozen Arabs reclining on two bastard Louis-something-or-other settees, who rose to their feet as we entered.  There was another man, sitting on a cushion in a corner by himself, who did not get up.  He wore a white head-dress exactly like our host’s, and seemed to consider himself somebody very important indeed.  After one swift searching glance at us he went into a brown study, as if a mere sheikh and a Christian alien were beneath his notice.

We were introduced first of all to the men who had stood up to greet us, and that ceremony took about five minutes.  The Arab believes he ought to know all about how you feel physically, and expects you to reciprocate.  When that was over ben Nazir took us to the corner and presented, first me, then Anazeh to the solitary man in the white head-dress, who seemed to think himself too important to trouble about manners.

Anazeh did not quite like my receiving attention first, and he liked still less the off-handed way in which the solitary man received us.  We were told his name was Suliman ben Saoud.  He acknowledged my greeting.  He and old Anazeh glared at each other, barely moving their heads in what might have been an unspoken threat and retort or a nod of natural recognition.  Anazeh turned on his heel and joined the other guests.

In some vague way I knew that Saoud was a name to conjure with, although memory refused to place it.  The man’s air of indifference and apparently unstudied insolence suggested he was some one well used to authority.  Presuming on the one thing that I felt quite sure of by that time—­my privileged position as a guest—­I stayed, to try to draw him out.  I tried to open up conversation with him with English, French, and finally lame Arabic.  He took no apparent notice of the French and English, but he smiled sarcastically at my efforts with his own tongue.  Except that he moved his lips he made no answer but went on clicking the beads of a splendid amber rosary.

Ben Nazir, seeming to think that Anazeh’s ruffled feelings called for smoothing, crossed the room to engage him in conversation, so I was left practically alone with the strange individual.  More or less in a spirit of defiance of his claim to such distinction, I sat down on a cushion beside him.

He was a peculiar-looking man.  The lower part of his cheek—­that side on which I sat—­was sunk in, as if he had no teeth there.  The effect was to give his whole face a twisted appearance.  The greater part of his head, of course, was concealed by the flowing white kaffiyi, but his skin was considerably darker than that of the Palestine Arab.  He had no eyebrows at all, having shaved them off—­for a vow I supposed.  Instead of making him look comical, as you might expect, it gave him a very sinister appearance, which was increased by his generally surly attitude.

Once again, as when I had entered the room, he turned his head to give me one swift, minutely searching glance, and then turned his eyes away as if he had no further interest.  They were quite extraordinary eyes, brimful of alert intelligence; and whereas from his general appearance I should have set him down at somewhere between forty and fifty, his eyes suggested youth, or else that keen, unpeaceful spirit that never ages.