ys of another world. He was
determined not to be denied anything that he really desired.

She turned again on her pillows, and she put her arms outside the sheet,
then she put her hands up to her face and felt that her cheeks were
burning. And she remembered how, long ago, when she was a young married
woman, one night she had lain awake and had felt her burning cheeks with
her hands.

That was soon after she had met the man for whom she had been divorced,
the man who had ruined her social life. Does life return upon its steps?
She remembered the violent joys of that secret love which had ultimately
been thrown down in the dust for all the world to stare at. Was she to
know such joys again? Was it possible that she could know them, had she
the capacity to know them after all she had passed through?

She knew she had that capacity, and with her fear was mingled a sense
of triumph; for she felt that with the years the capacity within her for
that which to her was joy had not diminished, but increased. And this
sense of increase gave her a vital sense of youth. Even Nigel had said,
"You are blossoming here!" Even he, whom she had so easily and so
completely deceived, had seen that truth of her clearly.

And when he came back from the Fayyum to stay again with her, or, more
probably, to fetch her away?

The voices that had come to her from far away on the Nile were hushed.
The night at last had imposed herself on the singers, and they had sunk
down to sleep under the mantle of her silence. But Mrs. Armine still lay
awake, felt as if the cessation of the singing had made her less capable
of sleeping.

When Nigel came to fetch her away to the tent in the Fayyum, what then?

She would not think about that, but she would obey her temperament. She
had two weeks of freedom before her, she who had had so many years of
freedom. She had only two weeks. Then she would use them, enjoy them to
the uttermost. She would think of nothing but the moment. She would
squeeze, squeeze out the golden juices that these moments contained
which lay immediately before her. The tent in the Fayyum--perhaps she
would never see it, would never come out in the night with Nigel to hear
the Egyptian Pan by the water. But--she would surely hear Baroudi sing
again to-morrow, she would surely, to-morrow, watch him while he sang.

She put her arms inside the bed, and feverishly drew the sheet up
underneath her chin. She must sleep, or to-morrow her fac