But he was wondering too.

The first saloon was empty.  Ibrahim left them in it, and went through the doorway beyond to the after part of the vessel.  Isaacson sat down on the divan, but Hartley moved about.  His present anxiety was in proportion to his past admiration of Mrs. Armine.  He had adored her enough once to be very much afraid of her now.

“I do—­I must say I hope she won’t make a scene,” he said.

“Oh, no.”

“Yes, but you didn’t see her this afternoon.”

“She was upset.  Some people can’t endure daytime sleep.  She’s had time now to recover.”

But Hartley did not seem to be reassured.  He kept looking furtively towards the door by which Ibrahim had vanished.  In about five minutes it was opened again by Ibrahim.  He stood aside, slightly bending and looking on the floor, and Mrs. Armine came in, dressed in a sort of elaborate tea-gown, grey in colour, with silver embroideries.  She was carefully made up, but not made up pale.  Her cheeks were delicately flushed with colour.  Her lips were red.  Her shining hair was arranged to show the beautiful shape of her head as clearly as possible and to leave her lovely neck quite bare.  Everything that could be done to render her attractive had been very deftly done.  Nevertheless, even Isaacson, who had seen the change in her that afternoon, and had been prepared for further change in her by Hartley, was surprised by the alteration a few hours had made in her appearance.

Middle-age, with its subtle indications of what old age will be, had laid its hands upon her, had suddenly and firmly grasped her.  As before, since she had been in Egypt, she had appeared to most people very much younger than she really was, so now she appeared older, decisively older, than she actually was.  When Isaacson had looked at her in his consulting-room he had thought her not young, nor old, nor definitely middle-aged.  Now he realized exactly what she would be some day as a painted and powdered old woman, striving by means of clever corsets, a perfect wig, and an ingenious complexion to simulate that least artificial of all things, youth.  The outlines of the face were sharper, cruder than before; the nose and chin looked more pointed, the cheek-bones much more salient.  The mouth seemed to have suddenly “given in” to the thing it had hitherto successfully striven against.  And the eyes burnt with a fire that called the attention to the dark night slowly but certainly coming to close about this woman, and to withdraw her beauty into its blackness.

Isaacson’s thought was:  “What must be the state of the mind which has thus suddenly triumphed over a hitherto triumphant body?” And he felt like a man who looks down into a gulf, and who sees nothing, but hears movements and murmurs of horror and despair.

Mrs. Armine came straight to Isaacson.  Her eyes, fastened upon him, seemed to defy him to see the change in her.  She smiled and said: