ire
within her. While she was on the _Loulia_, in an enclosed place, rather
like a beautiful prison, she had succeeded in concentrating herself to a
certain extent on matters in hand. She had had frightful hours of ennui
and almost of despair, but she had got through them somehow. And she had
been in command.

Now Nigel had been taken forcibly out of her hands, and the beautiful
prison was no more theirs. And this return to the home which had seen
the opening of her life in Egypt strangely excited her. Once again the
_Loulia_ lay there where she had lain when Baroudi was on board of her;
once again from the bank of the Nile Mrs. Armine heard the song of Allah
in the distance, as on that night when she heard it first, and it was a
serenade to her. But how much had happened between then and now!

Now in the house behind her there were two men--the man who did not know
her and loved her, and the man who did know her and hated her.

But the man who knew her, and who had wanted her just as she was--he was
not there.

She felt that she must see him again, quickly, that she must tell him
all that had happened since she had set sail on the _Loulia_. And yet
could she, dared she, leave Nigel alone with Meyer Isaacson?

She paced again on the sand, passing and repassing in front of the
darkness of the bushes.

When Isaacson had stood before her in the temple of Edfou, she had had a
moment of absolute terror--such a moment as can only come once in a
life. A period of fear and of struggle, of agony even, had followed. Yet
in that period there had been no moment quite so frightful. For she had
confronted the known, not the utterly unexpected, and she had been
fighting, and still she must fight.

But she must have a word from Baroudi, a look from Baroudi. Without
these, she felt as if she might--as if she must do something stupid or
desperate. She was coming to the end of her means, to the limit of her
powers, perhaps.

The hardest blow she had had as yet had been Doctor Hartley's escape out
of the circle of her influence. That escape had weakened her
self-confidence, had been a catastrophe surely grimly prophetic of other
catastrophes to come. It had even put into her mind a doubt that was
surely absurd.

Suppose Nigel were to emancipate himself!

If he were gone, she would care nothing. She would not want Nigel to
regret her. If she were gone, in a day he would be as one dead to her.
He meant nothing to her except a we