tween him and the woman
whom he loved and who was his? Do you think that I would allow any one,
woman or man, to come between me and you?"

"Are you sure you wouldn't?"

"What a tragedy it must be to be so distrustful of love as you are!" he
said, almost with violence.

"You haven't lived my life."

She, too, spoke almost with violence, and there was violence in her
eyes.

"You haven't lived for years in the midst of condemnation. Your friend,
Doctor Isaacson, secretly condemns me. I know it. And so I'm afraid of
him. I don't pretend to have any real reason--any reason that would
commend itself to a man. Women don't need such reasons for their fears."

"And yet you say that you like Isaacson!"

"So I do, in a way. At least, I thought I did, till you told me you'd
written to him to tell him about us and our life on the Nile."

He could not help smiling.

"Oh!" he said, moving nearer to her. "I shall never understand women.
What a reason for dislike of a man hundreds of miles away from us!"

"Hundreds of miles--yes! And if your letter brought him to us! Suppose
he took it into his head to run out and see for himself if what you
wrote was true?"

"Ruby! How wild you are in your suppositions!"

"They're not so wild as you think. Doctor Isaacson is just the man to do
such a thing."

"Well, even if he did--?"

"Do you want him to?" she interrupted.

He hesitated.

"You do want him to."

She said it bitterly.

"And I thought I was enough!" she exclaimed.

"It isn't that, Ruby--it isn't that at all. But I confess that I should
like Isaacson to see for himself how happy we are together."

"Did you say that in your letter?"

"No, not a word of it. But I did think it when I was writing. Wasn't it
a natural thought? Isaacson was almost my confidant--not quite, for
nobody was quite--about my feelings and intentions towards you before
our marriage."

"And if he could have prevented the marriage, he would have prevented
it."

"And because of that, if it's true, you wouldn't like him to see us
happy together?"

"I don't want him here. I don't want any one. I feel as if he might try
to separate us, even now."

"He might try till the Day of Judgment without succeeding. But you are
not quite fair to him."

"And he would never be fair to me. There's the after-glow coming at
last."

They watched it in silence giving magic to the western hills and to the
cloudless sky in the west. It was suggestive of p