“I do.”

“I promise.”

“Very well.  If you carry out that promise, I think I can undertake to cure you.  I think I can undertake that some day you will be once more the strong man who rejoices in his strength.”

Tears came into Nigel’s eyes.

“I wonder,” he said.  “I wonder.”

“But remember,” Isaacson said, almost with solemnity, “I shall expect from you implicit obedience to my medical orders.  And the first of them is this:  you are to swallow nothing which is not given to you by me with my own hand.”

“Medicine, you mean?”

“I mean what I say—­nothing; not a morsel of food, not a drop of liquid.”

“Then my wife and Hamza—­”

“Will you obey me?” Isaacson interrupted, almost sternly.

“Yes,” Nigel said, in a weak voice.

“And now just lie quiet, and remember you are going towards your home, in which I intend to get you quite well.”

And the Loulia floated down with the tide, slowly, and broadside to the great river, for there was no wind at all, and the weather was hot almost as a furnace.  The Fatma untied, and followed her down.  And the night came, and still they floated on broadside under the stars.

Nigel was now sleeping, and Meyer Isaacson was watching.

And in a cabin close by a woman was staring at her face in a little glass set in the lid of a gilded box, was staring, with desperation at her heart.

Hartley had said he believed she knew of the sudden collapse of her beauty.  Believed!  Before he had noticed it, she had perceived it, with a cold horror which, gathering strength, grew into a bitter despair.  And with the despair came hatred, hatred of the man who by keeping her back from happiness had led her to this collapse.  This man was Nigel.  He thought he had saved her from her worst self.  But really he had stirred this worst self from sleep.  In London she had been almost a good woman, compared to the woman she was now.  His bungling search after nobility of spirit had roused the devil within her.  She longed to let him know what she really was.  Often and often, while they two had been isolated together on the Loulia, she had been on the edge of telling him at least some fragments of the truth.  Her nerves had nearly betrayed her when through the long and shining hours the dahabeeyah lay still on the glassy river, far away from the haunts of men, and she, sick with ennui, nearly mad because of the dulness of her life, had been forced to play at love with the man whose former strength and beauty diminished day by day.