s Hamza?"

She nodded.

"He comes from Luxor. Good-bye again. And I'll send you the note some
time this morning, or in the early afternoon."

With a quick easy movement, like that of a young woman, she was in the
saddle, helped by the hand of Hamza.

Isaacson heard her sigh as she rode away.

XXXIII

Isaacson walked back alone into the temple. But the spell of the Nile
was broken. He had been rudely awaked from his dream, and so thoroughly
awaked that his dream was already as if it had never been. He was once
more the man he normally was in London--a man intensely, Jewishly alert,
a man with a doctor's mind. In every great physician there is hidden a
great detective. It was a detective who now walked alone in the temple
of Edfou, who penetrated presently once more to the sombre sanctuary,
and who stayed there for a long time, standing before the granite shrine
of the God, listening mentally in the absolute silence to the sound of
an ugly voice.

When the heat of noon approached, Isaacson went back to the _Fatma_. He
did not know at all how long a time had passed since Mrs. Armine had
left him, and when he came on board, he enquired of Hassan whether any
message had come for him, any note from the dahabeeyah that lay over
there to the south of them, drowned in the quivering gold.

"No, my nice gentlemans," was the reply, accompanied by a glance of
intense curiosity.

Questions immediately followed.

"That boat is the _Loulia_," said Isaacson, impatiently, pointing up
river.

"Of course, I know that, my gentlemans."

Hassan's voice sounded full of an almost contemptuous pity.

"Well, I know the people on board of her. They--one of them is a friend
of mine. That'll do. You can go to the lower deck."

Isaacson began to pace up and down. He pushed back the deck chairs to
the rail in order to have more room for movement. Although the heat was
becoming intense, and despite the marvellous dryness of the atmosphere,
perspiration broke out on his forehead and cheeks, he could not cease
from walking. Once he thought with amazement of his long and almost
complete inertia since he had left Luxor. How could he have remained
sunk in a chair for hours and hours, staring at the moving water and at
the monotonous banks of the Nile? Close to the _Fatma_ two shaduf men
were singing and bending, singing and bending. And had the shaduf songs
lulled him? Had they pushed him towards his dream? Now, as he listened
to