“Will you let me discuss the case amicably with you?  No formal consultation!  Just let me hear your views fully, and mention anything that occurs to me.”

“Occurs?  But you haven’t examined the patient.  You haven’t made any thorough examination, or entered into the circumstances of the case.”

“No.  But I’ve seen the patient.”

“Only for a very few minutes, I understand.  How can you have formed a definite opinion?”

“I did not say I had.  But one or two things struck me.”

Doctor Hartley stared with his handsome, round eyes.

“For instance, the patient’s sallow colour, the patient’s rheumatic pains, the patient’s breath, and—­did you happen to observe it?  But no doubt you did!—­the patient’s dropped wrist.”

The young doctor’s face had become more serious.  He looked much less conscious of himself at this moment.

“Dropped wrist!” he said.

“Yes.”

“Of course!  Muscular weakness brought on quite naturally by prolonged illness.  The man has simply been knocked down by this touch of the sun.  Travellers ought to be more careful than they are out here.”

“I suppose you’re aware that the patient has already lived and worked in Egypt for many months at a time.  He has land in the Fayyum, and has been cultivating it himself.  He’s no novice in Egypt, no untried tourist.  He’s soaked in the sun without hurt by the month together.”

“As much as that?” said Hartley.

“Isn’t it rather odd that so early in the year as February he should be stricken down by the spring sunshine?”

“It is queer—­yes, it is queer,” assented the other.

He crossed one leg over the other and looked abstracted.

“I suppose Mr. Armine himself thought the illness was brought about by the sun?” said Isaacson, after a minute.

“Well—­oh, from the first it was an understood thing that he’d got a touch of the sun.  There’s no doubt whatever about that.  He went out at noon, and actually dug at Thebes without covering his head.  Sheer madness!  People saw him doing it.”

“And it all came on after that?”

“Yes, the serious symptoms.  Of course he wasn’t in very good health to start with.”

“No?”

“He’d been having dyspepsia.  Caught a chill one evening bathing in the Nile—­somewhere off Kous, I believe it was.  That rendered him more susceptible than usual.”

“Naturally.  So that he was already unwell before he did that foolish thing at Thebes?”

“He was seedy, but not really ill.”

“What a long talk you’re having!” said a voice.

Both men started, and into Doctor Baring Hartley’s face there came a look of painful self-consciousness, as of one unexpectedly detected in an unpardonable action.  He sprang up.

Mrs. Armine was standing near the top of the companion.

XXXVII