with him, she who had come to spy out the land when she had come to Cleveland Square.  Perhaps it was very absurd, but the remembrance of Bella Donna prevented Isaacson now from announcing his presence on the Nile.  He was resolved to come to her as she had once come to him.  She had appeared in Cleveland Square carrying her secret reason with her.  He would appear in the shadow of the temple of Horus.  And his secret reason?  Perhaps he had none.  He was a man who was often led by instinct.

And he trusted very much in his instinctive mistrust of Bella Donna.

The Fatma was no marvellous boat like the Loulia.  She was small, poorly furnished, devoid of luxury, and not even very comfortable!  That night Isaacson lay on a mattress so thin that he felt the board beneath it.  The water gurgled close to him against the vessel’s side.  It seemed to have several voices, which were holding secret converse together in the great stillness of the night.  For long he lay awake in the darkness.  How different this darkness seemed from that other darkness of London!  He thought of the great temples so near him, of the tombs of the Kings, of all those wonders to see which men travelled from the ends of the earth.  And he was sailing at dawn, he who had seen nothing!  It seemed a mad thing to do.  His friends had been openly amazed when he had been forced to tell them of his immediate departure.  And he wanted, he longed, to see the wonders that were so near him in the night; Karnak with its pylons, its halls, its statues; the Colossi sitting side by side in their plain, with the springing crops about their feet; the fallen King in the Ramesseum, and that sad King who gazes for ever into the void beneath the mountain.

He longed to see these things, and many others that were near him in the night.

But he longed still more to look for a moment into the eyes of a woman, to take the hand and gaze at the face of a man.  And he was glad when, at dawn, he heard the movement of naked feet and the murmur of voices above his head, when, presently, the dahabeeyah shivered and swayed, and the Nile water spoke in a new and more ardent way as it held her in its embrace.

He was glad, for he knew he was going towards Edfou.

XXXI

Upon a hard and habitual worker an unexpected holiday sometimes has a weakening rather than a strengthening effect, in the first days of it.  Later may come from it vitality and a renewal of energy.  Just at first there steals over the worker a curious lassitude.  Parts of him seem to lie down and sleep.  Other parts of him are dreaming.

So it was now with Meyer Isaacson.

He got up from his Spartan bed feeling alert and animated.  He went up on deck full of curiosity and expectation.  But as the day wore on, the long day of golden sunshine, the dream of the Nile took him slowly, quietly, to its breast.  Strange were the empty hours to this man whose hours were generally so full.  And the solitude was strange.  For he sent Hassan away, and sat alone on the upper deck—­alone save for the Reis, who, like a statue, stood behind him holding the mighty helm.