What he wished and what he meant in regard to her Mrs. Armine did not know.  And just at this moment she scarcely cared.  The return to the villa and the departure of the Loulia seemed to have fanned the fire within her.  While she was on the Loulia, in an enclosed place, rather like a beautiful prison, she had succeeded in concentrating herself to a certain extent on matters in hand.  She had had frightful hours of ennui and almost of despair, but she had got through them somehow.  And she had been in command.

Now Nigel had been taken forcibly out of her hands, and the beautiful prison was no more theirs.  And this return to the home which had seen the opening of her life in Egypt strangely excited her.  Once again the Loulia lay there where she had lain when Baroudi was on board of her; once again from the bank of the Nile Mrs. Armine heard the song of Allah in the distance, as on that night when she heard it first, and it was a serenade to her.  But how much had happened between then and now!

Now in the house behind her there were two men—­the man who did not know her and loved her, and the man who did know her and hated her.

But the man who knew her, and who had wanted her just as she was—­he was not there.

She felt that she must see him again, quickly, that she must tell him all that had happened since she had set sail on the Loulia.  And yet could she, dared she, leave Nigel alone with Meyer Isaacson?

She paced again on the sand, passing and repassing in front of the darkness of the bushes.

When Isaacson had stood before her in the temple of Edfou, she had had a moment of absolute terror—­such a moment as can only come once in a life.  A period of fear and of struggle, of agony even, had followed.  Yet in that period there had been no moment quite so frightful.  For she had confronted the known, not the utterly unexpected, and she had been fighting, and still she must fight.

But she must have a word from Baroudi, a look from Baroudi.  Without these, she felt as if she might—­as if she must do something stupid or desperate.  She was coming to the end of her means, to the limit of her powers, perhaps.

The hardest blow she had had as yet had been Doctor Hartley’s escape out of the circle of her influence.  That escape had weakened her self-confidence, had been a catastrophe surely grimly prophetic of other catastrophes to come.  It had even put into her mind a doubt that was surely absurd.

Suppose Nigel were to emancipate himself!

If he were gone, she would care nothing.  She would not want Nigel to regret her.  If she were gone, in a day he would be as one dead to her.  He meant nothing to her except a weight that dragged upon her, keeping her from all that she was fitted for, from all that she desired.  But while she remained with Nigel, her influence must be paramount.  For Isaacson was at his elbow to take advantage of every opening.  And she was sure Isaacson would give her no mercy, if once he got Nigel on his side.