“The cook isn’t so bad, is he, Ruby?”

“Excellent,” she said.  “I don’t know when I’ve had such a capital dinner.  How can he do it all in a tent?”

She moved her chair.

“This table’s a little bit low,” she said.  “But I’ve no business to be so tall.  In camp one ought to be the regulation size.”

“Have you been uncomfortable?” he exclaimed, anxiously.

“No, no—­not really.  It doesn’t matter.”

“I’ll have it altered, made higher somehow, to-morrow.  We must have everything right, as we’re going to live in camp for some time.”

She got up.

“I won’t take coffee to-night,” she said.  “It would be too horrid to sleep badly in a tent.”

“You’ll see, you’ll sleep splendidly out here.  Every one does in camp.  One is always in the air, and one gets thoroughly done by the evening.”

“Yes, but I shan’t be working so hard as you do.”

She went to the tent-door.

“How long shall we be in the Fayyum?” she asked, carelessly.  “How long were you in it last year?”

“Off and on for nearly six months.”

She said nothing.  He struck a match and lit a cigar.

“But of course now it’s different,” he said.  “If you like it, we can stay on, and if you don’t we can go back presently to the villa.”

“And your work?”

“I ought to be here, so I hope you will like it, Ruby.”

He joined her at the tent-door.

“But this winter I mean to live for you, and to try to make you happy. 
We’ll just see how you like being here.  Do you think you will like it? 
Do you feel, as I do, the joy of being in such perfect freedom?”

He put his arm inside hers.

“It’s a tremendous change for you, but is it a happy change?” he asked.

“It’s wonderful here,” she answered; “but it’s so strange that I shall have to get accustomed to it.”

As she spoke, she was longing, till her soul seemed to ache, to take the early morning train to Cairo.  Accustomed for years to have all her caprices obeyed, all her whims indulged by men, she did not know how she was going to endure this situation, which a passionate love alone could have made tolerable.  And the man by her side had that passionate love which made the dreary Fayyum his Heaven.  She could almost have struck him because he was so happy.

“There’s one thing I must say I should love to do before we go away from Egypt,” she said, slowly.

She seemed to be led or even forced to say it.

“What’s that?”

“I should love to go up the Nile on a dahabeeyah.”

“Then you shall.  When we leave here and pass through Cairo, I’ll pick out a boat, and we’ll send it up to Luxor, go on board there, and then sail for Assouan.  But you mustn’t think we shall get a Loulia.”

He laughed.

“Millionaires like Baroudi don’t hire out their boats,” he added.  “And if they did, I couldn’t pay their price while Etchingham’s so badly let.”