“I don’t want to go alone.”

“I would far rather be alone than not have the exactly right companion—­some one who could think and feel with me, and in the sort of way I feel.  Any other companionship is destructive.”

Isaacson spoke with less than his usual self-possession, and there were traces of heat in his manner.

“Don’t you agree with me?” he added, as Nigel did not speak.

“People can learn to feel alike.”

“You mean that when two natures come together, the stronger eventually dominates the weaker.  I should not like to be dominated, nor should I like to dominate.  I love mutual independence combined with perfect sympathy.”

Even while he was speaking, he was struck by his own exigence, and laughed, almost ironically.

“But where to find it!” he exclaimed.  “Those are right who put up with less.  But you—­I think you want more than I do, in a way.”

He added that lessening clause, remembering, quite simply, how much more brilliant he was than Nigel.

“I like to give to people who don’t expect it,” Nigel said.  “How hateful the Circus is!”

“Shall we take a cab to Cleveland Square?”

“Yes—­I’ll come in for a little.”

When they were in the house, Nigel said: 

“I want to thank you for your visit to Mrs. Chepstow.”

He spoke abruptly, as a man does who has been for some time intending to say a thing, and who suddenly, but not without some difficulty, obeys his resolution.

“Why on earth should you thank me?”

“Because I asked you to go.”

“Is Mrs. Chepstow still in London?”

“Yes.  I saw her to-day.  She talks of coming to Egypt for the winter.”

“Cairo, I suppose?”

“I think she is sick of towns.”

“Then no doubt she’ll go up the Nile.”

There was a barrier between them.  Both men felt it acutely.

“If she goes—­it is not quite certain—­I shall look after her,” said Nigel.

Meyer Isaacson said nothing; and, after a silence that was awkward, Nigel changed the conversation, and not long after went away.  When he was gone, Isaacson returned to his sitting-room upstairs and lit a nargeeleh pipe.  He had turned out all the electric burners except one, and as he sat alone there in the small room, so dimly lighted, holding the long, snake-like pipe-stem in his thin, artistic hands, he looked like an Eastern Jew.  With a fez upon his head, Europe would have dropped from him.  Even his expression seemed to have become wholly Eastern, in its sombre, glittering intelligence, and in the patience of its craft.

“I shall look after her.”