l, one can never get really quite in
touch with an Eastern. I used to think one could. I used to swear it,
but--"

He shook his head and puffed at his cigar. Quite unconsciously he had
taken the husband's tone. There was something in the very timbre of his
voice which seemed to assume Ruby's agreement. She longed to startle
him, to say she was far more in touch with an Eastern than she could
ever be with him, but she thought of the dahabeeyah, the Nile, the
getting away from here.

"To tell the truth," she said, "I have always felt that. There is an
impassable barrier between East and West."

She looked at the distant light among the palm-trees. Then, with
contempt, she added:

"Those who try to overleap it must be mad, or worse."

Nigel's face grew stern.

"Yes," he said. "I loathe condemnation. But there are some things which
really are unforgivable."

He swung out his arm towards the light.

"And that is one of them. I hate to see that light so near us. It is the
only blot on perfection."

"Don't look at it," she murmured.

His unusual expression of vigorous, sane disgust, and almost of
indignation, partly fascinated and partly alarmed her.

"Don't think of it. It has nothing to do with us. Hark! What's that?"

A clear note, like the note of a little flute, sounded from the farther
side of the stream, was reiterated many times. Nigel's face relaxed. The
sternness vanished from it, and was replaced by an ardent expression
that made it look almost like the face of a romantic boy.

"It's--it's the Egyptian Pan by the water," he whispered.

His arm stole round her waist.

"Come a little nearer--gently. That's it! Now listen!"

The little, clear, frail sound was repeated again and again.

The young moon went down behind the palm-trees. Its departure, making
the night more dark, made the distant light in the grove seem more
clear, more definite, more brilliant.

It drew the eyes, it held the eyes of Bella Donna as the Egyptian Pan
piped on.

XXIII

Mrs. Armine summoned all her courage, all her patience, all her force of
will, and began resolutely, as she mentally put it, to earn her
departure from the land which she hated more bitterly day by day. The
situation she was in, so different from any that she had previously
known, roused within her a sort of nervous desperation, and this
desperation armed her and made her dangerous. And because she was
dangerous, she seemed often innocently hap