Very cautiously he went now.  He looked warily about him.  But he saw no more upon the bank.  It was not high here.  Without a long descent he would be able to see into the chambers of the Loulia, unless their shutters were closed against the night.  It was strange to think that he was close to Nigel, and that Nigel believed him to be in Cleveland Square, unless Mrs. Armine had been frank.  Now he saw something moving upon the bank, furtively creeping towards the lights, as if irresistibly attracted, and yet always afraid.  It was a wretched pariah dog, starving, and with its yellow eyes fixed upon the thing that contained food; a dog such as that which crept near to Mrs. Armine as she sat in the garden of the villa, while Nigel, above her, watched the stars.  As Isaacson came near to it, it shivered and moved away, but not far.  Then it sat down and shook.  Its ribs were like the ribs of a wrecked vessel.

Isaacson was close to the Loulia now.  He could see the balcony in the stern where the doll had moved by the rail.  It was lit by one electric burner, and was not closed in with canvas, though there was a canvas roof above it.  Beyond it, through two large apertures, Isaacson could see more light that gleamed in a room.  He stood still again.  Upon the balcony he saw a long outline, the outline of a deckchair with a figure stretched out in it.  As he saw this the silence was again broken by music.  From the lighted room came the chilly and modern sound of a piano.

Then Bella Donna had come down from her tower!  Or had she never been there?

Isaacson looked at the long outline, and listened.  His mind was full of that other music, the cry of Mohammedanism in the African night.  This music of Europe seemed out of place, like a nothing masquerading beneath the stars.  But in a moment he listened more closely; he moved a step nearer.  He was searching in his memory, was asking himself what that music expressed, what it meant to him.  No longer was it banal.  There was a sound in it, even played upon a piano, even heard in this night and this desolate place between two deserts, of the elemental.

Bella Donna was playing that part of “The Dream of Gerontius” where the soul of man is dismissed to its Maker.

“Proficiscere, anima Christiana, de hoc mundo!” (Go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul!  Go from this world!)

She was playing that, and the stretched figure in the long chair was listening to it.

At that moment Isaacson felt glad that he had come to Egypt—­glad in a new way.

“Go forth ... go from this world!”

Almost he heard the deep and irreparable voice of the priest, and in the music there was disintegration.  In it the atoms parted.  The temple crumbled to let the inmate come forth.

Presently the music ceased.  The murmur of a voice was audible.  Then one of the oblongs of light beyond the balcony was broken up by a darkness.  And the darkness came out, and bent above the stretched figure in the chair.  An instant later the electric burner that gave light to the balcony was extinguished.  Nigel and his wife were together in the dimness, with the lighted room beyond them.