adow
to-day in the garden--"

"I know, I know!"

"You remember the night we dined on the Pylon at Karnak? After dinner
you tried to show me the ruins by moonlight, and wherever we went a
black-robed watchman followed us, or a black-robed watchman glided from
behind a pillar, or an obelisk, or a crumbling wall, and faced us, and
at last we took to flight. Well, that's what life is like to certain
women; that's what life has been for a long time to me. Whenever I've
tried to look at anything beautiful quietly, I've been followed or faced
by a black-robed watchman, staring at me suspiciously. And to-day you
seemed to be one when you asked me that about Harwich."

She took up the glass and drank some more of the water. When she put it
down he was kneeling beside her. He put his arms around her.

"I won't be that again."

A very faint perfume from her hair came to him, now that he was so close
to her.

"I don't want to be that ever."

He held her, and, while he held her, he listened to the Nubian sailors
and to the word that was nearly always upon their tireless lips.

"Al-lah--Al-lah--Al-lah!"

God was there in the night, by the great, mysterious Nile, that flows
from such far-off sources in the wild places of the earth; God was
attending to them--to him and Ruby. He had the simple faith almost of a
child in a God who knew each thing that he thought, each thing that he
did. Thousands of men have this faith, and thousands of men conceal it
as they might conceal a sin. They fear their own simplicity.

The purpose of God, was it not very plain before him? He thought now
that it was. What he had to do was to restore this woman's confidence in
the goodness that exists by having a firm faith in the goodness existing
in her, by not letting that faith be shaken, as he had let it be shaken
that day.

He hated himself for having wounded her, and as he hated himself his
strong arms closed more firmly round her, trying to communicate
physically to her the resolution he was forming.

And the Nubian sailors went on singing.

To him that night they sang of God.

To her they sang of Mahmoud Baroudi.

XV

"What is the meaning of that Arabic writing, Mahmoud Baroudi?" said Mrs.
Armine on the following afternoon, as she stood with him and her husband
upon the lower deck of the _Loulia_, at the foot of the two steps which
led down to the big door dividing the lines of living-rooms from the
quarters of the Nubian s