splendid; the wonderful line of the neck had kept all
its beauty. She had grown younger in Egypt, and she knew very well why.
For her the new truth was clearly stamped, but not for Nigel. He would
read it wrongly; he would take it for himself, as so many deceived men
from the beginning of time have taken the truths of women, thinking "All
this is for me." She looked long at herself, and she rejoiced in the
vital change that had come over her, and, rejoicing, she came to the
resolve of a vain woman. She must exert all her will to keep with her
this Indian summer. She must school her nature, govern her passions,
drill her mind to accept with serenity what was to come--dulness, delay,
the long fatigues of playing a part, the ennui of tent life, of this
_solitude a deux_ in the Fayyum. She must not permit this opulence of
beauty to be tarnished by the ravages of jealousy; for jealousy often
destroys the beauty of women, turns them into haggard witches. But she
would not succumb; for, in her creed beauty was everything to a woman,
and the woman who had lost her beauty had ceased to count, was scarcely
any more to be numbered among the living. This sight and appreciation
of herself suddenly seemed to arm her at all points. Her depression,
which had peopled the night with horrors and the morning with
apprehensions, departed from her. She was able to believe that the
future held golden things, because she was able to believe in her own
still immense attraction.

That day she contented Nigel, she fascinated him, she charmed him with
her flow of animal spirits. He could deny her nothing. And when,
laughingly, she begged him, as she had dispensed with a maid, to let her
have her own special donkey-boy and donkey in the Fayyum, he was ready
to acquiesce.

"We'll take Mohammed, of course, if you wish," he said, heartily,
"though there are lots of donkey-boys to be got where we are going."

"I've given up Mohammed," she said.

He looked surprised.

"Have you? What's he done?"

"Nothing specially. But I prefer Hamza."

"The praying donkey-boy!"

"Yes."

She paused; then, looking away from him, she said slowly:

"There's something strange to me and interesting about him. I think it
comes, perhaps, from his intense belief in his religion, his intense
devotion to the Moslem's faith. I--I can't help admiring that, and I
should like to take Hamza with us. He's so different from all the
others."

Then, with a changed and ligh