dim and eerie. The blue jewel that hung in air
seemed like the cruel eye of a beautiful woman that was watching him as
he walked. He felt as if Bella Donna had mounted upon a tower to spy out
his progress in the night. With this fancy he played a sort of horrible
game, until deep in his mind a conviction grew that Mrs. Armine had
actually somehow divined his approach. How? Women have the strangest
intuitions. They know things that--to speak by the card--they cannot
know.

Surely Bella Donna was upon her tower.

He stopped at the edge of a field of doura. What was the use of going
further?

He looked to the north, then turned and looked to the south, comparing
the two distances that lay between him and his own boat, between him and
the _Loulia_. His mind had said, "If I'm nearer to the _Fatma_ I'll go
back; if I'm nearer to the _Loulia_ I'll go on." His eyes, keenly
judging the distances, told him he was nearer to the _Loulia_ than to
his own boat. The die was cast. He went on.

Surely Bella Donna knew it, spied it from her tower.

Now he heard he knew not where, violent voices of fellahin, of many
fellahin talking, as it seemed, furiously in the darkness. The noise
suggested a crowd roused by some strong emotion. It sounded quite near,
but not close. Isaacson stood still, listened, tried to locate it, but
could not. The voices rose in the night, kept perpetually at a high,
fierce pitch, like voices of men in a frenzy. Then abruptly they failed,
as if the night, wearied with their importunity, had fallen upon the
speakers and choked them. And the silence, broken only by the faint
rustle of the doura, was startling, was almost dreadful.

Isaacson walked more quickly, fixing his eyes on those lights to the
south. As he drew near to them, he was conscious of a sort of cold
excitement, cold because at its core lay apprehension. When he was very
near to them and could distinguish the solidity of the darkness out of
which they were shining, he walked slowly, and then presently stood
still. And as he stood still the Nubian sailors on the _Loulia_ began to
sing the song about Allah which Mrs. Armine had heard from the garden of
the Villa Androud on her first evening in Upper Egypt.

First a solo voice, vehement, strange to Western ears, immensely
expressive, like the voice of a mueddin summoning the faithful to
prayer, cried aloud, "Al-lah! Al-lah! Al-lah!" And this voice was
accompanied by a deep and monotonous murmur,