His arm stole round her waist.

“Come a little nearer—­gently.  That’s it!  Now listen!”

The little, clear, frail sound was repeated again and again.

The young moon went down behind the palm-trees.  Its departure, making the night more dark, made the distant light in the grove seem more clear, more definite, more brilliant.

It drew the eyes, it held the eyes of Bella Donna as the Egyptian Pan piped on.

XXIII

Mrs. Armine summoned all her courage, all her patience, all her force of will, and began resolutely, as she mentally put it, to earn her departure from the land which she hated more bitterly day by day.  The situation she was in, so different from any that she had previously known, roused within her a sort of nervous desperation, and this desperation armed her and made her dangerous.  And because she was dangerous, she seemed often innocently happy, and sometimes ardently happy; she seemed to have cast away from her any lingering remnants of the manner of a great courtesan which had formerly clung about her.  Nigel would have denied that there had been such remnants; nevertheless, he felt and rejoiced in the change that came.  He said to himself that he was justified of his loving experiment.  He had restored to Ruby her self-respect, her peace of mind and body, and in doing so he had won for himself a joy that he had not known till now.

In that joy his nature expanded, his energies leaped up, his mind kindled, his heart glowed and burned.  He felt himself twice the man that he had formerly been.  He flung himself into his work with almost a giant’s strength, into his pleasure, riding, shooting, fishing, with the enthusiasm of a boy for the first time freed from tutelage.

Mrs. Armine was rewarded for her effort of cunning by the happiness of her husband, and by his gratitude and devotion to her.  For she was clever enough to put him into the place the world thought she ought to occupy, into the humble seat of the grateful.  She succeeded very soon in infecting his mind with the idea that it was good of her to have married him, that she had given up not a little in doing so.  She never made a complaint, but very often she indicated, as if by accident, that for the sake of the upward progress she was enduring a certain amount of definite hardship cheerfully.  There was scarcely a day, for instance, when she did not contrive to recall to his mind the fact that, for his sake, she was doing without a maid for the first time in her life.  Yet she never said, “I wish I had kept Marie.”  Her method was, “How thankful I am we decided to get rid of Marie, Nigel!  She would have been wretched here.  The life would have killed her, though I manage to stand it so splendidly.  But servants never will put up with a little discomfort.  And it’s so good of you not to mind my looking anyhow, and always wearing the same old rag.”  Such things were said with a resolutely cheerful voice which announced a moral effort.