eace and of remoteness,
suggestive of things clarified, purged, made very wonderfully pure, but
not coldly pure. When it died away into the breast of the softly
advancing night, Nigel felt as if it had purged him of all confusion of
thought and feeling, as if it had set him quite straight with himself.

"That makes me feel as if I understood everything just for a moment," he
said. "Ruby, don't let us get into any difficulties, make any
difficulties for ourselves out here. We are having such a chance for
peace, aren't we? We should be worse than mad if we didn't take it, I
think. But we will take it. I understand that your life has made you
suspicious of people. I believe I understand your fears a little, too.
But they are groundless as far as I am concerned. Nobody on earth could
ever come between you and me. Only one person could ever break our
union."

"Who?"

"Yourself. Hark! the sailors are singing. I expect we are going to tie
up."

That night, as Mrs. Armine lay awake in the cabin which was Baroudi's,
and which, in contrast to all the other bedrooms on the _Loulia_, was
sombre in its colouring and distinctively Oriental, she thought of the
conversation of the afternoon, and realized that she must keep a tighter
hold over her nerves, put a stronger guard upon her temper. Without
really intending to, she had let herself run loose, she had lost part of
her self-control. Not all, for as usual when she told some truth, she
had made it serve her very much as a lie might have served her. But by
speaking as she had about Meyer Isaacson she had made herself fully
realize something--that she was afraid of him, or that in the future she
might become afraid of him. Why had Nigel written just now? Why had he
drawn Isaacson's attention to them and their lives just now? It was
almost as if--and then she pulled herself up sharply. She was not going
to be a superstitious fool. It was, of course, perfectly natural for
Nigel to write to his friend. Nevertheless, she wished ardently that
Isaacson was not his friend, that those keen doctor's eyes, which seemed
to sum up the bodily and mental states of woman or man with one bright
and steady glance, had never looked upon her.

And most of all she wished that they might never look upon her again.

XXVII

In the house in Cleveland Square, on a morning in late January, Meyer
Isaacson read Nigel's letter.

"Villa Androud,

"Luxor, Upper Egypt, Jan. 21st.