What was he going to do?

Again he began to pace the deck.  It was not very far to Assouan—­Gebel Silsile, Kom Ombos, then Assouan.  It was some hundred and ten kilometres.  The steamers did it in thirteen hours.  But the Fatma, going always against the stream, would take a much longer time.  At Assouan he could seek out this man, Baring Hartley.

But she had suggested that!

How entirely he distrusted this woman!

Mrs. Armine and he were linked by their dislike.  He had known they might be when he met her in London.  To-day he knew that they were.  It seemed to him that he read her with an ease and a certainty that were not natural.  And he knew that with equal ease and certainty she read him.  Their dislike was as a sheet of flawless glass through which each looked upon the other.

He picked up the field-glass again, and held it to his eyes.

The felucca was close to the Loulia now.  And the doll upon the balcony was once more moving by the rail.

He was certain this doll was Mrs. Armine, and that she was restless for his answer.

The tiny boat joined the dahabeeyah, seemed to become one with it.  The doll moved and disappeared.  Isaacson put down the glass.

In his note to Mrs. Armine, the note she was reading at that moment, he had politely accepted her decision, and written that he would look out for them at Assouan.  He had written nothing about Doctor Hartley, nothing in answer to her postscript.  His note had been shorter than hers, rather careless and perfunctory.  He had intended, when he was writing it, to convey to her the impression that the whole matter was a trifle and that he took it lightly.  But he, too, had put his postscript.  And this was it: 

“P.S.  I look forward to a real acquaintance with you at Assouan.”

And now, if he gave the word to the Reis to untie, to pole off, to get out the huge oars, and to cross to the western bank of the river!  Soon they would be level with the Loulia.  A little later the Loulia would lie behind them.  A little later still, and she would be out of their sight.

“God knows when they’ll be at Assouan!”

Isaacson found himself saying that.  And he felt as if, as soon as the Fatma rounded the bend of the Nile and crept out of sight on her slow way southwards, the Loulia would untie and drop down towards the north.  He felt it?  He knew it as if he had seen it happen.

“Hassan!”

When Hassan answered, Isaacson bade him tell the Reis that he and his men could rest all the afternoon.

“I’m going to Edfou again.  I shall probably spend some hours in the temple.”

“Him very fine temple.”

“Yes.  I shall go alone and on foot.”

A few minutes later he set out.  He gained the temple, and stayed in it a long time.  When he returned to the Fatma, the afternoon was waning.  In the ethereal distance the Loulia still lay motionless.