Ibrahim smiled, and sauntered away, going towards the bank of the Nile.  His golden robe faded among the little trunks of the orange-trees.

“It was the gardener’s dog,” said Nigel, letting himself down into his chair with a sigh of satisfaction.  “I’ve made him feed the poor brute.  It was nearly starving.  That’s why it came to us.”

“I see.”

“Al-lah!” he murmured, saying the word like an Eastern man.

He looked into her eyes.

“The first word you hear in the night from Egypt, Ruby, Egypt’s night greeting to you.  I have heard that song up the river in Nubia often, but—­oh, it’s so different now!”

During her long experience in a life that had been complex and full of changes, Mrs. Armine had heard the sound of love many times in the voices of men.  But she had never heard till this moment Nigel’s full sound of love.  There was something in it that she did not know how to reply to, though she had the instinct of the great courtesan to make the full and perfect reply to the desires of the man with whom she had schemed to ally herself.  She owed this reply to him, but she owed it how much more to something within herself!  But there existed within him a hunger for which she had no food.  Why did he show this hunger to her?  Already its demonstration had tried her temper, but to-night, for the first time, she felt her whole being set on edge by it.  Nevertheless, she was determined he should not see this, and she answered very quietly: 

“I am hearing this song for the first time with you, so I shall always associate it with you.”

He drew a little nearer to her.  And she understood and could reply to the demand which prompted that movement.

“We must drink Nile water together, Ruby, Nile water—­in all the different ways.  I’ll take you to the tombs of the Kings, and to the Colossi when the sun is setting.  And when the moon comes, we’ll go to Karnak.  I believe you’ll love it all as I do.  One can never tell, of course, for another.  But—­but do you think you’ll love it all with me?”

Mingled with the ardour and the desire there was a hint in his voice of anxiety, of the self-doubt which, in certain types of natures, is the accompaniment of love.

“I know I shall love it all—­with you,” she said.

She let her hand fall into his, and as his hand closed upon it she was physically moved.  There was in Nigel something that attracted her physically, that attracted her at certain moments very strongly.  In the life that was to come she must sweep away all interference with that.

“And some day,” he said, “some day I shall take you to see night fall over the Sphinx, the most wonderful thing in Egypt and perhaps in the whole world.  We can do that on our way to or from the Fayyum when we have to pass through Cairo, as soon as I’ve arranged something for you.”

“You think of everything, Nigel.”