He got up.  Again he hated her for her knowledge of men.  He hated her so much that he longed to be away from her.  Why should she be allowed to take a life like Armine’s into her soiled hands, even if she could make him happy for a time, being a mistress of deception?

“Good-bye.”

He just touched her hand.

“Good-bye.  I am grateful.  You know why.”

Again she sent him that cordial smile.  He left her standing up by the hearth.  The glow from the flames played over her rose-coloured gown.  Her beautiful head was turned towards the door to watch him go.  In one hand she held her cigarette.  Its tiny wreath of smoke curled lightly about her, mounting up in the warm, bright room.  Her figure, the shape of her head, her eyes—­they looked really lovely.  She was still the “Bella Donna” men had talked about so long.  But as he went out, he saw the tiny wrinkles near her eyes, the slight hardness about her cheekbones, the cynical droop at the corners of her mouth.

Armine did not see them.  He could not make Armine see them.  Armine saw only the beauties she possessed.  His concentration on them made for blindness.

And yet even he had his ugliness.  For now Isaacson believed in the liaison between him and Mrs. Chepstow.

Only eight days later, after Mrs. Chepstow and Nigel had sailed for Alexandria, did he learn that they were married.

XI

Immediately after their marriage at a registrar’s office, Nigel and his wife, with a maid, and a great many trunks of varying shapes and sizes, travelled to Naples and embarked on the Hohenzollern for Egypt, where Nigel had rented for the winter the Villa Androud, on the bank of the Nile near Luxor.

Nigel was happy, but he was not wholly free from anxiety, although he was careful to keep that anxiety from his wife, and desired even sometimes to deny that it existed to himself.  In making this marriage he had obeyed the cry of two voices within him, the voice of the senses and the voice of the soul.  He did not know which had sounded most clearly; he did not know which inclination had prevailed over him most strongly, the longing for a personal joy, or the pitiful desire to shed happiness and peace on a darkened and soiled existence.  The future perhaps would tell him.  Meanwhile he put before him one worthy aim, to be the perfect husband.

Although the month was November, and the rush for the Nile had not begun, the Hohenzollern was crowded with passengers, and when the Armines came into the dining-room for lunch, as the vessel was leaving Naples, every place was already taken.

“Give us a table upstairs alone,” said Nigel to the head-steward, putting something into his hand.  “We shall like that ever so much better.”

He had caught sight of a number of staring English faces, on some of which there seemed to be more than the dawning of a recognition of Mrs. Armine.