“Thank you.”

She took it, put it to her lips, and drank.  Then she set the glass down on the writing-table.

“We’re at the beginning of things, Nigel,” she said.  “That’s the truth.  We can’t jump into a mutual perfection of relationship at once.  I’ve got very few illusions, and I dare say I’m absurdly sensitive about certain matters, much more sensitive than even you can imagine.  The fact is I’ve—­I’ve been trodden on for a long while.  A man can’t know what a woman—­a lady—­who’s been thoroughly ‘in it’ feels when she’s put outside, and kept outside, and—­trodden on.  It sends her running to throw her arms round the neck of the Devil.  That may be abominable, but it’s the fact.  And, when she tries to come back from the Devil—­well, she’s a mass of nerves, and ready to start at a shadow.  I saw a shadow to-day in the garden—­”

“I know, I know!”

“You remember the night we dined on the Pylon at Karnak?  After dinner you tried to show me the ruins by moonlight, and wherever we went a black-robed watchman followed us, or a black-robed watchman glided from behind a pillar, or an obelisk, or a crumbling wall, and faced us, and at last we took to flight.  Well, that’s what life is like to certain women; that’s what life has been for a long time to me.  Whenever I’ve tried to look at anything beautiful quietly, I’ve been followed or faced by a black-robed watchman, staring at me suspiciously.  And to-day you seemed to be one when you asked me that about Harwich.”

She took up the glass and drank some more of the water.  When she put it down he was kneeling beside her.  He put his arms around her.

“I won’t be that again.”

A very faint perfume from her hair came to him, now that he was so close to her.

“I don’t want to be that ever.”

He held her, and, while he held her, he listened to the Nubian sailors and to the word that was nearly always upon their tireless lips.

“Al-lah—­Al-lah—­Al-lah!”

God was there in the night, by the great, mysterious Nile, that flows from such far-off sources in the wild places of the earth; God was attending to them—­to him and Ruby.  He had the simple faith almost of a child in a God who knew each thing that he thought, each thing that he did.  Thousands of men have this faith, and thousands of men conceal it as they might conceal a sin.  They fear their own simplicity.

The purpose of God, was it not very plain before him?  He thought now that it was.  What he had to do was to restore this woman’s confidence in the goodness that exists by having a firm faith in the goodness existing in her, by not letting that faith be shaken, as he had let it be shaken that day.

He hated himself for having wounded her, and as he hated himself his strong arms closed more firmly round her, trying to communicate physically to her the resolution he was forming.

And the Nubian sailors went on singing.