f-control
was for a moment shaken, she succeeded in leading Nigel to attribute any
momentary sharpness, cynicism, or even bitterness, to some failure in
himself which had awakened the doubts of the woman long trampled on.
Subtly she recalled to him the night after the scene in the garden of
the Villa Androud; she reminded him--without words--of the words she
had spoken then. He seemed to hear her saying: "After this morning you
will have to prove your belief in me to me, thoroughly prove it, or else
I shall not believe it. It will take a little time to make me feel quite
safe with you, as one can only feel when the little bit of sincerity in
one is believed in and trusted." And he remembered the resolve he had
taken on that night of crisis, to restore this woman's confidence in
goodness by having a firm faith in the goodness existing in her. And he
condemned himself and braced himself for new efforts. Those efforts were
not difficult for him to make now that he had Ruby all to himself, now
that he saw her utterly divorced from her old life and companions, now
that he held her in the breast of Nature, now that he knew--as how could
he not know?--that she was living virtuously, sanely, simply, and, as he
thought, splendidly and happily, despite the lingering backward glances
she sometimes cast at the old luxury foregone. It is very difficult for
the human being who finds perfect happiness in a life to realize that
such a life to another may be a torment.

And Ruby made few mistakes. When she was with her husband, her now
unpainted face was serene. She worked bravely to earn her release from a
life that was unsuited to her whole temperament, and that was utterly
odious to her.

But had not Hamza and Ibrahim been in the camp with her, she often said
to herself that she could not have endured this period. That they were
there meant that she was not forgotten, that while she was being
patient, in a distant place, somewhere upon the great river, in the
golden climate of Upper Egypt, some one else was being patient too.

Surely it meant, it must mean, that!

But she was haunted by a jealousy that, instead of being diminished by
time and absence, increased with each passing day, even waking up in her
a vital force of imagination she had not suspected she possessed. She
knew men as a race _au fond_--knew their fickleness, swift
forgetfulness, readiness to be content with the second best, so
different from the far greater Epic