be
telling her that it was not so. But to-day, in this terrible greyness,
this melancholy, this chilly pallor, she could not trust it. She turned.

"Ibrahim! Ibrahim!" she cried out.

He rose from the sands and sauntered towards her. He came and stood
silently beside her.

"Ibrahim," she began.

She looked at him, and was silent. Then she called on her resolute self,
on the self that had been hardened, coarsened, by the life which she had
led.

"Ibrahim, do you know where Baroudi is--what he has been doing all this
time?" she asked.

"What he has bin doin' I dunno, my lady. Baroudi he doos very many
things."

"I want to know what he has been doing. I must, I will know."

The spell of place, the spell of the great and frigid silence, was
suddenly and completely broken. Mrs. Armine stood up in the sand. She
was losing her self-control. She looked at the dreary prospect before
her, growing sadder as evening drew on; she thought of Nigel perfectly
happy, she even saw him down there a black speck in the immensity,
creeping onward towards his pleasure, and a fury that was vindictive
possessed her. It seemed to her absolutely monstrous that such a woman
as she was should be in such a place, in such a situation, waiting in
the sand alone, deserted, with nothing to do, no one to speak to, no
prospect of pleasure, no prospect of anything. A loud voice within her
seemed suddenly to cry, to shriek, "I won't stand this. I won't stand
it."

"I'm sick of the Fayyum," she said fiercely, "utterly sick of it. I want
to go back to the Nile. Do you know where Baroudi is? Is he on the Nile?
I hate, I loathe this place."

"My lady," said Ibrahim, very gently, "there is good jackal-shootin'
here."

"Jackal-shooting, duck-shooting--so you think of nothing but your
master's pleasure!" she said, indignantly. "Do you suppose I'm going to
sit still here in the sand for days, and do nothing, and see nobody,
while--while--"

She stopped. She could not go on. The fierceness of her anger almost
choked her. If Nigel had been beside her at that moment, she would have
been capable of showing even to him something of her truth. Ibrahim's
voice again broke gently in upon her passion.

"My lady, for jackal-shootin' you have to go out at night. You have to
go down there when it is dark, and stay there for a long while, till the
jackal him come. You tie a goat; the jackal him smell the goat and
presently him comin'."

She stared at him a