“No, what does it matter?  We shall so soon be in our own house.  Tell me about the villa, Nigel, and Luxor.  You know I have never seen it.”

With little more than a word she had deftly flicked the intruding stranger out of their lives, she had concentrated herself on Nigel.  He felt that all her force, like a strong and ardent stream, was flowing into the new channel which he had cut for her.  He obeyed her.  He told her about Egypt.  And as he talked, and watched her listening, he began to feel thoroughly for the first time the vital change in his life, and something within him rejoiced, that was surely his manhood singing.

The voyage passed swiftly by, attended by perfect weather, calm, radiant, blue—­weather that releases humanity from any bonds of depression into a joyous world.  Yet for the Armines it was not without an unpleasant incident.  Among the passengers were a Lord and Lady Hayman, whom Nigel Armine knew, and whom Mrs. Armine had known in the days when London had loved her.  It was impossible not to meet them, equally impossible not to perceive their cold confusion at each encounter, shown by a sudden interest in empty seas and unpopulated horizons.  That they mistook the situation was so evident to Nigel that one day he managed to confront Lord Hayman in the smoke-room and to have it out with him.

“Congratulate you, I’m sure, congratulate you!” murmured that gentleman, whose practical brown eyes became suddenly wells full of ironical amazement.  “Tell my wife at once.  Knew nothing at all about it.”

He got away, with a moribund cigar between his teeth, and no doubt informed Lady Hayman, who thereafter bowed to Nigel, but with a reluctant muscular movement that adequately expressed an inward moral surprise mingled with condemnation.  Mrs. Armine seemed totally undisturbed by these demonstrations, her only comment upon the lady being that it was really strange that “in these days” any one could be found to wear magenta and red together, especially any one with a complexion like Lady Hayman’s.  And her astonishment at the triple combination of colours seemed so simple, so sincere, that it had to be believed in as merely an emanation from an artistic temperament.  It was probable that the Haymans told other English on the Hohenzollern the news of Nigel’s marriage, for several of the faces that had stared from the luncheon-tables continued to stare on the deck, but with a slightly different expression; the sheer, dull curiosity being exchanged for that half-satirical interest with which the average person of British blood regards a newly-married couple.

This contemplation of them made Nigel secretly angry, and awoke in him a great and peculiar tenderness for his wife, founded on a suddenly more acute understanding of the brutality of the ostracism, combined with notoriety, which she had endured in recent years.  Now at last she had some one to protect her.  His heart enfolded her with ample wings.  But he longed to be free from this crowd, from which on a ship they could not escape, and they spoke to no one during the voyage except to their companion at meals.