Isaacson’s treatment of Nigel’s case had succeeded wonderfully.  As the great heats began to descend upon Upper Egypt, the health of the invalid improved day by day.  Mrs. Armine saw life returning into the eyes that had expressed a sick weariness of an existence suddenly overcast by the cloud of suffering.  The limbs moved more easily as a greater vitality was shed through the body.  The nights were no longer made a torment by the acute rheumatic pains.  The parched mouth and throat craved no more perpetually for the cooling drinks that had not allayed their misery.  Light could be borne without any grave discomfort, and the agonizing abdominal pains, which had made the victim writhe and almost desire death, had entirely subsided.  From the face, too, the dreadful hue which had even struck those who had only seen Nigel casually had nearly departed.  Though still very thin and pale, it did not look unnatural.  It was now the face of a man who had recently suffered, and suffered much; it was not a face that suggested the grave.

Nigel would recover, was fast recovering.  He would not be strong for a time, perhaps for a long time.  But he was “out of the wood.”  One day he realized it, and told himself so, silently, with a sort of wonder mingled with a joy half solemn, half lively with the liveliness of the spirit that again felt the touch of youth.

The day that he realized it was the day that Isaacson found the motive he had in the dark been seeking.

And on that day, too, Mrs. Armine told herself that she could endure no longer.  She must get away to Cairo, if only for two or three days.  If Baroudi was not there, she must go to Alexandria and seek him.  Baffled desire, enforced patience, the perpetual presence of Meyer Isaacson, with whom she was obliged to keep up a pretence of civility and even of gratitude, and the jealousy that grows like a rank weed in the soil of ignorance, rendered her at last almost reckless.  She was sure if she remained longer in the villa she would betray herself by some sudden outburst.  Isaacson had kept silence so long as to the cause of her husband’s illness that she sometimes nearly deceived herself into thinking he did not know what it was.  Perhaps she had been a fool to be so much afraid of him.  She strove to think so, and nearly succeeded.

The Loulia lay always by the western shore of the Nile, but each night, when she looked from the garden, the cabin windows were dark.  She had made enquiries of Ibrahim.  But Ibrahim was no longer the smiling, boyish attendant who had been her slave.  He performed his duties carefully, and was always elaborately polite, but he had an air of secrecy, of uneasiness, and almost of gloom, and when she mentioned Baroudi, he said: 

“My lady, I know nothin’.”

“Well, but on the Loulia?” she persisted.  “The Reis—­the crew—?”

“They knows nothin’.  Nobody heeyah know nothin’ at all.”