She met him in the garden, a little beyond the terrace. He had on an overcoat and a soft hat, and was carrying a cloak for her.

"You shouldn't walk out in the night air with bare arms and shoulders," he said, holding the cloak so that she could easily put it on.

She turned her back on him, put up her hands and so took it.

"It's very warm to-night."

"Still, it's imprudent."

"You playing sick nurse!"

But all the gaiety had gone out of her voice, all the liveliness had vanished from her manner.

"Shall we walk a little?" he said. "Shall we go to the bank of the river?"

"No, no. You mustn't tire yourself. Let us sit down, and very soon I shall send you to bed."

"Not just yet."

"I'm—"

"It isn't that I want you to play. Besides, that noise over there would disturb us. No, but I want to talk to you. I must talk to you to-night."

One side of her mouth went down. But she turned her face quickly, and he did not see it. They came on to the terrace before the lighted windows.

"Sit down here, Ruby—near to me."

She sat down. With the very madness for movement thrilling, tingling, through all her weary and feverish body she was obliged to sit down quietly.

Nigel sat down close to her. There was a silence.

"Oh," she said, almost desperately to break it, "we haven't had coffee to-night. Shall I—would you like me to make it once more for you?"

She spoke at random. She wanted to move, to do something, anything. She felt as if she must occupy herself in some way, or begin to cry out, to scream.

"Shall I? Shall I?" she repeated, half getting up.

Nigel looked at her fixedly.

"No, Ruby, not to-night."

She sank back.

"Very well. But I thought you liked my coffee."

"So I did. So I shall again."

He put out his hand to touch hers.

"Only not to-night."

"Just as you like."

"We've—there are other things to-night."

He kept his eyes always fixed upon hers.

"Other things!" she said. "Yes—sleep. You must rest well to-night, and so must I."

A fierce irony, in despite of herself, broke out in her voice as she said the last three words. It frightened her, and she burst into a fit of coughing, and pulled up her cloak about her bare neck. To do this she had to draw away her hand from Nigel's. She was thankful for that.

"I swallowed quantities of dust and sand in the train," she said.

He held out his hand to take hers again, and she was forced to give it.

"I shall rest to-night," he said. "Because I've come to a resolution. If I hadn't, if—if I followed my first thought, my first decision, I know I should not be able to rest. I know I shouldn't."

She stared at him in silence.

"Ruby," he said, "you remember our first evening here?"

"Yes," she forced herself to say.

Would he never end? Would he never let go of her hand? never let her get away to the Nile, to that barbarous music?

"I think we were getting close to each other then. But—but I think we are much closer now. Don't you?"

"Yes," she managed to say.

"Closer because I've proved you; I've proved you through all this dreadful illness."

His hand gripped hers more firmly.

"But you, perhaps, haven't proved me yet as I have proved you."

"Oh, I don't doubt your—"

"No, but I want you to know, to understand me as I believe I understand you. And that's why I'm going to tell you something, something very—frightful."

There was a solemnity in his voice which held, which startled her.

"Frightful?" she almost whispered.

"Yes. I didn't mean ever to tell you. But somehow, when you came back to-day, came hurrying back to me so quickly, without even doing what you went away to do, somehow I began to feel as if I must tell you, as if I should be a cad not to, as if it was your right to know."

She said nothing. She had no idea what was coming.

"It is your right to know."

He paused. Now he was not looking at her, but straight before him into the darkness.

"Last night Isaacson and I were here."

At the Doctor's name she moved.

"I had asked him to tell me what my illness had been, what I had been suffering from. He said he would tell me. This was before."

Now again he looked at her.

She formed "Yes" with her lips.

"When we were out here after dinner, I asked him again to tell me. I had had your telegram then."

She nodded.

"He knew you were coming back a day sooner than we had expected."

She nodded again.

"And he told me. I am going to tell you what he said. He said that I had been poisoned"—her hand twitched beneath his—"by a preparation of lead, administered in small doses through a long period of time."

"Poisoned!"

"Yes."

"And—and you believe such a thing?"

"Yes. In such matters Isaacson knows."

"Poisoned!" she repeated.

She said the word without the horror he had expected, dully, mechanically. He thought perhaps she was dazed by surprise.

"But that's not all," he said, still holding her hand closely. "I asked him who on board the Loulia could have wished for my death."

"That's—that's just what I was thinking," she managed to say.

"And then he said a dreadful thing."

"What?"

"He said that you had done it."

She took her hand away from his sharply, and sat back in her chair. He did not move. They sat there looking at each other. And their silence was disturbed by the perpetual singing on the Loulia.

And so it had been said!

Isaacson had discovered the exact truth, and had told it to Nigel!

She felt a reckless relief. As she sat there, she seemed to be staring not at Nigel but at herself. And as she stared at herself, she marvelled.

"He said that you had done it, or, if not that, had known that it was being done, had meant it to be done."

She remained silent and motionless. And now, with her thought of the truth revealed to her husband was linked another thought of the girl with Baroudi on board of the Loulia.

"Then I told him to go, or I would put him out."

"Ah!" she said.

There was a sort of bitter astonishment in the exclamation, and now in the eyes regarding him Nigel seemed to discern wonder.

"And he went, after he had told me some—some other things."

Something in her, in her face, or her manner, or her deadly silence, broken only by that seemingly almost sarcastic cry—began evidently to affect her husband.

"Some other things," he repeated.

"What were they?"

"He said he had come out from England because he had suspected something was wrong. He told me that he met you by chance in the temple of Edfou, that you seemed terrified at seeing him, that it was not you who asked him to come to the Loulia to see me, but that, on the contrary, he asked to come and you refused to let him. He said you even sent him a letter telling him not to come. He gave me that letter. Here it is. I have not read it."

He put his hand into his coat and drew out the letter, and with it the gilded box which Baroudi had given to her in the orange garden.

"There is the letter."

He laid it on the table.

"I found this in your room when I went for the cloak," he said, "full of Eastern things for the face."

His eyes were a question.

"I bought it in Cairo yesterday."

He laid it down.

"In spite of that letter—Isaacson said—he did come that night, and he overheard us talking on the balcony, and heard me say how I wished he were in Egypt."

He stopped again. His own narrative seemed to be waking up something in his mind.

"Why didn't you tell me then that you knew he was in Egypt?" he asked.

She merely raised her eyebrows. Within her now the recklessness was increasing. With it was blent a strange and powerful sensation of fatalism.

"Was it because you hated Isaacson so much?"

"That was it."

"But then—but then, when he was with me, you said that you had brought him. You said that in the temple you had begged him to come. I remember that quite well."

"Do you?" she said.

And fate seemed to her to be moving her lips, to be forming for her each word she said.

"Yes. Why was that? Why did you say that?"

"Don't remember!"

"You don't—?"

He got up slowly out of his chair.

"But the—the strangest thing Isaacson said was this."

He put one hand on the back of the chair, and leaned down a little towards her.

"He said that at last he forced you to let him attend me as a doctor by—by threatening you."

"Oh!"

"By threatening, if you would not, to call in the police authorities."

She said nothing. All he was saying flowed past her like running water. No more than running water did it mean to her. Apparently she had fought and struggled too long, and the revenge of nature upon her was this terrible indifference following upon so much of terror, of strife, of enforced and desperate patience.

"Ruby!"

---

"Ruby!"

"Well?" She looked at him. "What is it?"

"You don't say anything!"

"Why should I? What do you want me to say?"

"Want! I—but—"

He bent down.

"You—you don't think—you aren't thinking that I—?"

"Well?"

"I've told you this to prove my complete trust in you. I've only told you so that there may be nothing between us, no shadow; as even such a thing, hidden, might be."

"Ah!"

"And if there are things I don't understand, I know—they are such trifles in comparison—I know you'll explain. Won't you?"

"Not to-night. I can't explain things to-night."

"No. You're tired out. To-morrow—to-morrow!"

"Ah!" she said again.

He leant right down to her, and took both her hands.

"Come upstairs with me! Come!" She stood up. "Come! I'll prove to you—I'll prove to you—"

There was a sort of desperation of crude passion in his manner.

He tried to draw her towards the house. She resisted him.

"Ruby!"

"I'm not coming."

He stopped.

"Ruby!" he said again, but with a different voice.

"I'm not coming!"

His hands grew cold on hers. He let her hands go. They dropped to her sides.

"So you didn't believe what Isaacson told you?" she said.

Her only thought was, "I'll make him give me my liberty! I'll make him give me my liberty, so that Baroudi must keep me!"

"What?" he said.

"You didn't believe what Isaacson told you?" she repeated.

"Believe it! I turned him out!"

"You fool!" she said.

She moved a step nearer to him.

"You fool!" she repeated. "It's true!"

She snatched up the gilded box from the table. He tore it out of her hands.

"Who—who—?" he whispered, with lips that had gone white.

"Mahmoud Baroudi," she said.

The box fell from his hands to the terrace, scattering the aids to her beauty, which he had always hated.

She turned, pulled her cloak closely round her, and hurried to the bank of the Nile.

"Ibrahim! Ibrahim!"

"My lady!"

He came, striding up the bank.

"Take my hand! Help me! Quickly!"

She almost threw herself down the bank.

"Where is the boat—ah!"

She stumbled as she got into it, and nearly fell.

"Push off!"

She sat straight up on the hard, narrow bench, and stared at the lights on the Loulia.

"There's a girl on board," she said, in a minute.

"Yes, my lady, one girl. Whether Mahmoud Baroudi likin' we comin' I dunno."

"Ibrahim!"

"My lady!"

"Directly I go on board the Loulia, you are to go. Take the boat straight back to Luxor."

"I leavin' you?"

He looked relieved.

"Yes. I'll—I'll come back in Baroudi's felucca."

"I quite well stayin', waitin' till you ready."

"No, no. I don't wish that. Promise me you will take the boat away at once."

"All what you want you must have," he murmured.

"How loudly the sailors are singing!" she said.

Now they were drawing near to the Loulia. Mrs. Armine, with fierce eyes, gazed at the lighted cabin windows, at the upper deck, at the balcony in the stern where so often she had sat with Nigel. She was on fire with eagerness; she was the prey of an excitement that made her forget all her bodily fatigue, forget everything except that at last she was close to Baroudi. Already her husband had ceased to exist for her. He was gone for ever with the past. Not only the river but a great gulf, never to be bridged, divided them.

"Baroudi! Baroudi! Baroudi!"

She could belong to Baroudi openly at last. In this moment she even forgot herself, forgot to think of her appearance. Within her there was a woman who could genuinely feel. And that woman asserted herself now.

The boat touched the Loulia's side. A Nubian appeared. The singing on board abruptly ceased. Mrs. Armine quickly stood up in the boat.

"Go to Luxor, Ibrahim! Go at once!"

"I goin' quick, my lady."

She sprang on board and stood to see him go. Only when the boat had diminished upon the dark water did she turn round. She was face to face with Hamza.

"Hamza!" she said, startled.

His almond-shaped eyes regarded her, and she thought a menace was in them. Even in the midst of her fiery excitement she felt a touch of something that was cold as fear is cold.

"Yes," he said.

"I must see Mahmoud Baroudi."

He did not move. His expression did not change. The Nubians, squatting in a circle on the deck a little way off, looked at her calmly, almost as animals look at something they have very often seen.

"Where is he?" she said. "Where is he?"

And abruptly she went down the steps, under the golden letters, and into the first saloon. It was lit up, but no one was there. She hurried on down the passage, pulled aside the orange-coloured curtain, and came into the room of the faskeeyeh.

On the divan, dressed in native costume, with the turban and djelab, Baroudi was sitting on his haunches with his legs tucked under him, smoking hashish and gazing at the gilded ball as it rose and fell on the water. A little way off, supported by many cushions, an Eastern girl was lying. She looked very young, perhaps sixteen or seventeen. But her face was painted, her eyes were bordered with kohl, and the nails of her fingers and of her bare toes were tinted with the henna. She wore the shintiyan, and a tob, or kind of shirt of coloured and spangled gauze. On her pale brown arms there were quantities of narrow bracelets. She, too, was smoking a little pipe with a mouthpiece of coral.

Mrs. Armine stood still in the doorway. She looked at the girl, and now, immediately, she thought of her own appearance, with something like terror.

"Baroudi!" she said. "Baroudi!"

He stared at her face.

When she saw that, with trembling fingers she unfastened her cloak and let it fall on the floor.

"Baroudi!" she repeated.

But Baroudi still stared at her face.

With one hand he held the long stem of his pipe, but he had stopped smoking.

At once she felt despair.

But she came on into the middle of the saloon.

"Send her away!" she said. "Send her away!"

She spoke in French. And he answered in French:

"Why?"

"I've left my husband. I've left the villa. I can never go back."

"Why not?" he said, still gazing at her face.

He threw back his head, and his great throat showed among the folds of muslin that swept down to his mighty chest.

"He knows!"

"Knows! Who has told him?"

"I have!"

As he looked at her, she grew quite cold, as if she had been plunged into icy water.

"You have told him about me?" he said.

"Not all about you! But he knows that—that I made him ill, that I wished him to die. I told him, because I wanted to get away. I had to get away—and be with you...."

The bracelets on the arms of the Eastern girl jingled as she moved behind Mrs. Armine.

"Send her away! Send her away!" Mrs. Armine repeated.

"Hamza!"

Baroudi called, but not loudly. Hamza came in at the door.

Baroudi spoke to him quickly in Arabic. A torrent of words that sounded angry, as Arabic words do to those from the Western world, rushed out of his throat. What did they mean? Mrs. Armine did not know. But she did know that her fate was in them.

Hamza said nothing, only made her a sign to follow him.

But she stood still.

"Baroudi!" she said.

"Go with Hamza," he said, in French.

And she went, without another word, past the girl, and out of the room.

Hamza, with a sign, told her to go in front of him. She went slowly down the passage, into the first saloon. There she hesitated, looked back. Hamza signed to her to go on. She passed under the Loulia's motto—for the last time. On the sailors' deck she paused.

The small felucca of the Loulia was alongside. Hamza took her by the arm. Although his hand was small and delicate, it seemed to her then a thing of iron that could not be resisted. She got into the boat. Where was she going to be taken? It occurred to her now that perhaps Baroudi had some plan, that he did not choose to keep her on board, that he had a house at Luxor, or—

The Villa Nuit d'Or! Was Hamza going to take her there in the night?

Hamza sat down, took the oars, pushed off.

Yes, he was rowing up stream against the tide! A wild hope sprang up in her. The Loulia diminished. Always Hamza was rowing against the tide, but she noticed that the felucca was drifting out into the middle of the Nile. The current was very strong. They were making little or no headway. She longed to seize an oar, to help the boat up stream. Now the eastern bank of the river grew more distinct, looming out of the darkness. It seemed to be approaching them, coming stealthily nearer and nearer. She saw the lights in the Villa Androud.

"Hamza!" she murmured. "Hamza!"

He rowed on, without much force, almost languidly. Never could they go up against the tide if he did not pull more strongly. Why had they not two of the Nubians with them? The lights of the villa vanished. They were hidden by the high and shelving bank.

"Hamza!" she cried out. "Hamza!"

There was a slight shock. The felucca had touched bottom. Hamza, with a sort of precision characteristic of him, stepped quietly ashore and signed to her to come.

She knew she would not go. And, instantly, she went.

Directly she stood upon the sand, near the tangle of low bushes, Hamza pushed off the felucca, springing into it as he did so, and rowed away on the dark water.

"Hamza!" she called.

"Hamza! Hamza!" she shrieked.

The boat went on steadily, quickly, and disappeared.

---

Nearly an hour later there appeared at the edge of the garden of the Villa Androud a woman walking unsteadily, with a sort of frantic slowness. She made her way across the garden and drew near to the terrace, beyond which light shone out from the drawing-room through the tall window space. Close to the terrace she stood still, and she looked into the room.

She saw Nigel sitting crouched upon a sofa, with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands. He was alone, and was sitting quite still.

She stood for some time staring in at him. Then at last, as if making up her mind to something, she moved, and slowly she stepped upon the terrace.

Just as she did this, the door of the drawing-room opened and Ibrahim came in, looking breathless and scared. Behind him came Meyer Isaacson.

The woman stood still on the terrace.

Ibrahim remained by the door. Nigel never moved. Meyer Isaacson came quickly forward into the room as if he were going to Nigel. But when he was in the middle of the room, something seemed to startle him. He stopped abruptly, looked questioningly towards the window, then came out to the terrace. On the threshold he stopped again. He had seen the woman. He looked for a moment at her, and she at him. Then he came forward, put out his hands quickly, unlatched the wooden shutters, which were set back against the house wall, and pulled them inward towards him. They met with a clang, blotting out the room from the woman's eyes.

Then she waited no longer. She made her way to the gate of the garden, passed out to the deserted track beyond, and disappeared into the darkness, going blindly towards the distant hills that keep the Arabian desert.

THE END