“Who?”

“Yourself.  Hark! the sailors are singing.  I expect we are going to tie up.”

That night, as Mrs. Armine lay awake in the cabin which was Baroudi’s, and which, in contrast to all the other bedrooms on the Loulia, was sombre in its colouring and distinctively Oriental, she thought of the conversation of the afternoon, and realized that she must keep a tighter hold over her nerves, put a stronger guard upon her temper.  Without really intending to, she had let herself run loose, she had lost part of her self-control.  Not all, for as usual when she told some truth, she had made it serve her very much as a lie might have served her.  But by speaking as she had about Meyer Isaacson she had made herself fully realize something—­that she was afraid of him, or that in the future she might become afraid of him.  Why had Nigel written just now?  Why had he drawn Isaacson’s attention to them and their lives just now?  It was almost as if—­and then she pulled herself up sharply.  She was not going to be a superstitious fool.  It was, of course, perfectly natural for Nigel to write to his friend.  Nevertheless, she wished ardently that Isaacson was not his friend, that those keen doctor’s eyes, which seemed to sum up the bodily and mental states of woman or man with one bright and steady glance, had never looked upon her.

And most of all she wished that they might never look upon her again.

XXVII

In the house in Cleveland Square, on a morning in late January, Meyer Isaacson read Nigel’s letter.

     “Villa Androud,

     “Luxor, Upper Egypt, Jan. 21st.

     “Dear Isaacson,

“Here at last is a letter, the first I’ve sat down to write to you since the note telling you of my marriage.  I had your kind letter in answer, and showed it to Ruby, who was as pleased with it as I was.  She liked you from the first, and I think has always wished to know you better since you went to cheer her up in her London solitude.  Some day I suppose she will have the chance, but now we are on the eve of cutting ourselves off from every one and giving ourselves up to the Nile.  You are surprised, perhaps?  You thought I should be hard at it in the Fayyum, looking after my brown fellows?  Well, I’m as keen as ever on the work there, and if you could have seen me not many days ago, nearly up to my knees in mud, and as oily and black as a stoker, you’d know it.  My wife was in the Fayyum with me, and has been roughing it like a regular Spartan.  She packed off her French maid so as to be quite free, and has been living under the tent, riding camels, feeding anyhow, and, in short, getting a real taste of the nomad’s life in the wilds.  She cottoned to it like anything, although no doubt she missed her comforts now and then.  But she never complained, she’s looking simply splendid—­years younger than she did when you saw her in London—­and