She knew she had that capacity, and with her fear was mingled a sense of triumph; for she felt that with the years the capacity within her for that which to her was joy had not diminished, but increased.  And this sense of increase gave her a vital sense of youth.  Even Nigel had said, “You are blossoming here!” Even he, whom she had so easily and so completely deceived, had seen that truth of her clearly.

And when he came back from the Fayyum to stay again with her, or, more probably, to fetch her away?

The voices that had come to her from far away on the Nile were hushed.  The night at last had imposed herself on the singers, and they had sunk down to sleep under the mantle of her silence.  But Mrs. Armine still lay awake, felt as if the cessation of the singing had made her less capable of sleeping.

When Nigel came to fetch her away to the tent in the Fayyum, what then?

She would not think about that, but she would obey her temperament.  She had two weeks of freedom before her, she who had had so many years of freedom.  She had only two weeks.  Then she would use them, enjoy them to the uttermost.  She would think of nothing but the moment.  She would squeeze, squeeze out the golden juices that these moments contained which lay immediately before her.  The tent in the Fayyum—­perhaps she would never see it, would never come out in the night with Nigel to hear the Egyptian Pan by the water.  But—­she would surely hear Baroudi sing again to-morrow, she would surely, to-morrow, watch him while he sang.

She put her arms inside the bed, and feverishly drew the sheet up underneath her chin.  She must sleep, or to-morrow her face would show that she had not slept.  And Baroudi stared at her while he sang.

Again she was seized by fear.

XVIII

Late the next morning there awoke with Mrs. Armine a woman who for a time had lain in a quiescence almost like that of death, a woman who years ago had risked ruin for a passion more physical than ideal, who, when ruin actually overtook her, had let the ugly side of her nature run free with a loose rein, defiant of the world.

Only when she awoke to that new day did she fully realize the long effort she had been making, and how it had tired and irritated her nerves and her temperament.  She had won her husband by playing a part, and ever since she had won him she had gone on playing a part.  And this acting had not hitherto seemed to her very difficult, although there had been moments when she had longed fiercely to show herself as she was.  But now that she had spent some hours with a man who read her rightly, and who desired of her no moral beauty, no strivings after virtue, no bitter regret for any actions of the past, she realized the weight of the yoke she had been bearing, and she was filled with an almost angry desire for compensation.

She felt as if destiny were heavily in her debt, and she was resolved that the debt should be paid to the uttermost farthing.