The distant singers had been silent for some minutes; now their voices were heard again, and sounded nearer to the garden, as if they were on some vessel that was drifting down the river under the brilliant stars.  So much nearer was the music that Mrs. Armine could hear a word cried out by a solo voice, “Al-lah!  Al-lah!  Al-lah!” The voice was accompanied by a deep and monotonous murmur.  The singer was beating a daraboukkeh held loosely between his knees.  The chorus of nasal voices joined in with the rough and artless vehemence which had in it something that was sad, and something that, though pitiless, seemed at moments to thrill with yearning, like the cruelty of the world, which is mingled with the eternal longing for the healing of its wounds.

“We hear the boatmen singing,” he repeated, “about Allah, and always Allah, Allah, the God of the Nile, and of us two on the Nile.”

“Sh—­sh!  There’s that dog again!  I do wish—­”

She had begun to speak with an abrupt and almost fierce nervous irritation, but she recovered herself immediately.

“Couldn’t the gardener keep him out?” she said, quietly.

“Perhaps he belongs to the gardener.  I’ll go and see.  I won’t be a minute.”

He sprang up and followed the dog, which crept away into the garden, looking around with its desolate, yellow eyes to see if danger were near it.

Allah—­Allah—­Allah in the night!

Mrs. Armine did not know that this song of the boatmen of Nubia was presently, in later days she did not dream of, to become almost an integral part of her existence on the Nile; but although she did not know this, she listened to it with an attention that was strained and almost painful.

“Al-lah—­Al-lah—­”

“And probably there is no God,” she thought.  “How can there be?  I am sure there is none.”

Abruptly Meyer Isaacson seemed to come before her in the darkness, looking into her eyes as he had looked in his consulting-room when she had put up her veil and turned her face towards the light.  She shut her eyes.  Why should she think about him now?  Why should she call him up before her?

She heard a slight rustle near her, and she started and opened her eyes.  By one of the French windows the dragoman Ibrahim was standing, perfectly still now, and looking steadily at her.  He held a flower between his teeth, and when he saw that she had seen him, he came gracefully forward, smiling and almost hanging his head, as if in half-roguish deprecation.

“What did you say your name was?” Mrs. Armine asked him.

He took the flower from his teeth, handed it to her, then took her hand, kissed it, bent his forehead quite low, and pressed her hand against it.

“Ibrahim Ahmed, my lady.”

She looked at his gold-coloured robe, at his European jacket, at the green and gold fringed handkerchief which he had wound about his tarbush, and which covered his throat and fell down upon his breast.