r
cupful, and began to drink it without putting in milk or sugar. It
tasted acrid, astringent, almost fierce, on her palate; it lifted the
weariness from her, seemed to draw back curtains from a determined
figure which slipped out naked into the light, the truth of herself
untired and unashamed.

Nigel would have to reckon with that some day.

The gold was fading from the river now, the water was becoming like
liquid silver, then, in a moment, like liquid steel. On the dahabeeyah,
which began to look as if it were a long way off and were receding from
her, shone a red and a blue light. Still the vehement voices of the
brown fellahin at work by the shaduf rose unwearied along the Nile.
During the last days Mrs. Armine's ears had grown accustomed to these
voices, so accustomed to them that it was already becoming difficult to
her to realize that but a short time ago she had never heard them, never
felt their curious influence, their driving power, which, mingled with
other powers of sun and air, flogs the souls of men and women into
desire of ungentle joys and of sometimes cruel pleasures. And now, with
the fading away of the daylight, those powerful, savage, and sad voices
gained in meaning, seemed no more to be issuing from the throats of
toiling and sweating Egyptians, but to be issuing from the throat of
this land of ruins and gold, where the green runs flush with the sand,
and the lark sings in the morning, where the jackal whines by night.

For a long time Mrs. Armine listened, sitting absolutely still. Then
suddenly she moved, got up, and went swiftly towards the house. Nigel
was coming back. Mingling with the voices of the shaduf men she heard
the voices of Baroudi's Nubians.

When she had reached the house, she went up at once to her bedroom, shut
the door, and stood by the open window that gave on to a balcony which
faced towards the Nile. The voices of the shaduf men had now suddenly
died away. With the rapid falling of night the singers' time for repose
had come; they had slipped on their purple garments, and were walking to
their villages. Those other voices drew nearer and nearer, murmuring
deeply, rather than actually singing, their fatalistic chaunt which set
the time for the oars.

Darkness came. The voices ceased.

Mrs. Armine leaned forward, with one hand on the window-frame. Her white
teeth showed on her lower lip.

In the garden she heard two voices talking, and moving towards the
house.