“We have to do what we want in the world without losing anything by it.  Thus it has always been with me in my life.”

She thought of all she had lost long ago by doing the thing she desired, and again she felt herself inferior to him.

“And this, too, we shall do without losing anything by it,” he said.

“This?  What?”

“Go back to Kurun.  Tell me.  Will you not presently need to have a dahabeeyah?”

“And if we do?”

“You shall have the Loulia.”

“You mean to come with us?”

“Are you a child?  I shall let it to your husband at a price that will suit his purse, so that you may be housed as you ought to be.  I shall let it with my crew, my servants, my cook.  Then you must take your husband away with you quietly up the Nile.”

Again Mrs. Armine was conscious of a shock of cold.

“Quietly up the Nile?” she repeated.

“Yes.”

“What is the use of that?”

“Perhaps he will like the Nile so much that he will not come back.”

He looked into her eyes.  She heard the snarl of a camel.

“Your camel is ready,” he said.

They walked towards the fire where Ibrahim was awaiting them.  Before Mrs. Armine had settled herself in the palanquin Baroudi moved away without another word, and as the camel rose, complaining in the night, she saw him lift the canvas of the Ghawazee’s tent and disappear within it.

When she reached the camp by the lake, Nigel had not returned.  She undressed quickly, got into bed, and lay there shivering, though heavy blankets covered her.

Just at dawn Nigel came back.

Then she shut her eyes and pretended to sleep.

Always she was shivering.

XXV

“Ruby,” Nigel said, as he stood with her on the deck of the Loulia and looked up at the Arabic letters of gold inscribed above the doorway through which they were going to pass, “what is the exact meaning of those words?  Baroudi told us that day at Luxor, but I’ve forgotten.  It was some lesson of fate, something from the Koran.  D’you remember?”

She turned up her veil over the brim of her burnt-straw hat.  “Let me see!” she said.

She seemed to make an effort of memory, and lines came on her generally smooth forehead.

“I fancy it was ‘The fate of every man have we bound about his neck,’ or something very like that.”

“Yes, that was it.  We discussed it, and I said I wasn’t a fatalist.”

“Did you?  Come along.  Let’s explore.”

“Our floating home—­yes.”

He took hold of her arm.

“If my fate is bound about my neck, it’s a happy fate,” he said—­“a fate I can wear as a jewel instead of bearing as a burden.”

They went down the steps together, and vanished through the doorway into the shadows beyond.