When the light was turned out, the pariah dog got up stealthily and crept much nearer to the Loulia.  Its secret movement, observed by Isaacson, made an unpleasant impression upon him.  He drew a parallel between it and himself, and felt himself to be a pariah, because of what he was doing.  But something within him that was much stronger than his sense of discretion, and of “the right thing” for a decently bred man to do, had taken him to this place in the night, kept him there, even prompted him to imitate the starving dog, and to move nearer to those two who believed themselves isolated in the dimness.

He was determined to hear the voice of the stretched figure in the long chair.

The light that issued from the room of the faskeeyeh faintly illuminated part of the balcony.  Isaacson heard the murmuring voice of Mrs. Armine again.  Then one of the oblongs was again obscured, and the room was abruptly plunged in darkness.  As Mrs. Armine returned, Isaacson stole down the shelving bank and took up a position close to the last window of this room.  The crew and the servants were all forward on the lower deck, which was shut in closely by canvas.  On the upper deck of the boat there was no one.  If Mrs. Armine had lingered after putting out the light, she would perhaps have seen the figure of a man.  But she did not linger.  Isaacson had felt that she would not linger.  And he was out of range of the vision of any one on the balcony, although now so close to it that it was almost as if he stood upon it.  The Nile flowed near his feet with a sucking murmur that was very faint in the night.  There was no other sound to interfere between him and the two voices.

A dress rustled.  He thought of the sanctuary in the temple of Edfou.  Then a faint and strangely toneless voice, that he did not recognize, said: 

“That’s ever so much better.  I do hate that strong light.”

“But who is that in the chair, then?” Isaacson asked himself, astonished.  “Have they got some one on board with them?”

“Electric light tries a great many people.”

Isaacson knew the voice which said that.  It was Mrs. Armine’s voice, gentle, melodious, and seductive.  And he thought of the hoarse and hideous sound which that morning he had heard in the temple.

“Do sit down by me,” said the first voice.

Could it really be Nigel’s?  This time there was in it a sound that was faintly familiar to Isaacson—­a sound to which he listened almost as a man may regard a shadow and say to himself, “Is that shadow cast by my friend?”

A dress rustled.  And the tiny noise was followed by the creak of a basket chair.

“Don’t you think you’re a little better to-night?” said Mrs. Armine.

The other sighed.

“No.”

“Doctor Baring Hartley said you would recover rapidly.”

“Ruby, he doesn’t understand my case.  He can’t understand it.”