ntent with that knowledge. He would not
make her the gift of his goodness.

And--to do so would be useless.

"Yes?" she said.

She sat up on the sofa. She was looking lightly curious.

"If you do go to the Nile, let me wish you a happy winter."

He was once more the self-possessed Doctor so many women liked.

"If I go, I shall know how to make him happy," she replied, echoing his
cool manner, despite her more earnest words.

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 di