“Just look at the duck, Ruby!” said Nigel, as she came out.  “What a place for sport!”

For once their usual roles were reversed; he was practical, while she was imaginative, or at least strongly affected by her imagination.  He had been looking to his guns, making arrangements with a huge and nearly black dweller of the tents to show him the best sport possible for a fixed sum of money.

“But it’s the devil to get within range of them,” he added.  “I shall have to do as the natives do, I expect.”

“What’s that?” she asked, with an effort.

“Strip, and wade in up to my neck, carrying my gun over my head, and then keep perfectly still till some of them come within range.”

He laughed with joyous anticipation.

“I’ve told Ibrahim he must have a roaring big fire for me when I get back.”

“Are you going to-day?”

“Yes, I think I’ll have just an hour.  D’you feel up to riding the donkey to the water’s edge, and coming out on the lake with me?”

She hesitated.  In this waste and in this silence she felt almost incapable of a decision.  Then she said: 

“No, I think I’ve had enough for to-day.  You must bring me back a duck for dinner.”

“I swear I will.”

He gripped her hands when he went.  He was full of the irrepressible joy of the sportsman starting out for his pleasure.

“What will you do till I come back?”

“Rest.  Perhaps I shall read, and I’ll talk to Ibrahim.  He always amuses me.”

“Good.  I’m going to ride the donkey and take Hamza.”

Just as he was mounting, he turned round, and said: 

“Ruby, I’m having my time now.  You shall have yours.  You shall have the best dahabeeyah to be got on the Nile, the Loulia, if Baroudi will hire it out to us.”

“Oh, the Loulia would cost us too much,” she said, “even if it could be hired.”

“We’ll get a good one, anyhow, and you shall see every temple—­go up to Halfa, if you want to.  And now pray for duck with all your might.”

He rode away down the sand slope towards the lake, and presently, with Hamza and the native guide, was but a moving speck in the pallid distance.

Mrs. Armine watched them from a folding chair, which she made Ibrahim carry out into the sand some hundreds of yards from the camp.

“Leave me here for a little while, Ibrahim,” she said.

He obeyed her, and strolled quietly away, then presently squatted down to keep guard.

At first Mrs. Armine scarcely thought at all.  She stared at the sand slopes, at the sand plains, at the sand banks, at the wilderness of tamarisk, at the grey waters spotted with duck, at the little moving black things that, like insects, crept towards them.  And she felt like—­what?  Like a nothing.  For what seemed a very long time she felt like that.  And then, gradually, very gradually, her self began to wake, began to release itself from the spell of place, and to struggle forward, as it were, out of the shattering grip of the silence.  And she burned with indignation in the chill air of the desert.