oftly
behind him.

XXXV

With such abrupt and adroit decisiveness had Meyer Isaacson acted, so
swift and cunning had been his physical carrying out of his sudden
resolve--a resolve, perhaps, determined by her frigid malice--that for a
moment Mrs. Armine lost all command of her powers--even, so it seemed,
all command of her thoughts and desires. When the door shut and she was
alone, she stood where she was and at first did not move a finger. She
felt dull, unexcited, almost sleepy, and as one who is dropping off to
sleep sometimes aimlessly reiterates some thought, apparently
unconnected with any other thought, unlinked with any habit of the mind,
she found herself, in imagination, with dull eyes, seeing the Arabic
characters above the doorway of the _Loulia_, dully and silently
repeating the words Baroudi had chosen as the motto of the boat in which
this thing--Isaacson's departure to Nigel--had happened:

"The fate of every man have we bound about his neck."

So it was. So it must be. With an odd and almost grotesque physical
response to the meaning which at this moment she but vaguely
apprehended, she let her body go. She shrank a little, drawing her
shoulders forward, like one on whom a burden that is heavy is imposed.
About her neck had been bound this fate. But the movement, slight though
it was, recalled the woman who had defied and had bled the world--had
defied the world of women, and had bled the world of men. And, like a
living thing, there sprang up in her mind the thought:

"I'm the only woman on board this boat."

And she squared her shoulders. The numbness passed, or she flung it
angrily from her. And she had the door open and was through the doorway
in an instant, and crying out in the long corridor that led to the room
of the faskeeyeh:

"Nigel! Nigel! What do you think of my surprise?"

There were energy and beauty in the cry, and she came into the room with
a sort of soft rush that was intensely feminine. The men were there.
Nigel was sitting up, but leaning against cushions on the divan close to
the upright piano, on which stood the score of "Gerontius." Isaacson was
standing before him, bending, and holding both his hands strongly, in an
attitude that looked almost violent. Behind him, in the Eastern house of
Baroudi the spray of the little fountain aspired, and the tiny gilded
ball rose and fell with an airy and frivolous movement.

Mrs. Armine was not reasoning as she came in to