aited! What torment she had endured! What
danger, what failure she had undergone! But for a moment she forget
everything in that thought which went like wine to her head, "To-night I
shall be with Baroudi!" She did not just then go beyond that thought.
She did not ask herself what sort of reception he would give her. That
wine from the mind brought a carelessness, almost a recklessness, with
it, preventing analysis, sweeping away fears. A sort of spasm--was it
the very last?--of youth seemed to leap up in her, like a brilliant
flame from a heap of ashes. And she let the flame shoot out towards
Nigel.

And again he was saying:

"For me!"

He was repeating it to himself, and he was reiterating silently those
terrible words with which he had struck the man who had saved him from
death.

"You liar! You damnable liar!"

The dinner was not the _supplice_ Mrs. Armine had anticipated. She
talked, she laughed, she was gay, frivolous, gentle, careless, as in the
days long past when she had charmed men by mental as much as by merely
physical qualities. And Nigel responded with an almost boyish eagerness.
Her liveliness, her merriment, seemed not only to delight but to
reassure something within him. She noticed that. And, noticing it, she
was conscious that with his decision, beneath it as it were, there was
something else, some far different quality, stranger to her, though
faintly perceived, or perhaps, rather, obscurely divined by that
sleepless intuition which lives in certain women. Her apparent
joyousness gave helping hands to something in Nigel, leading it forward,
onward--whither?

She was to know that night.

At length the dinner was over, and they got up to go into the
drawing-room. And now, instantly, Mrs. Armine was seized by a frantic
longing to escape. The felucca, she felt sure, was waiting on the still
water just below the promontory. If only Nigel would remain behind over
his cigarette in the dining-room for a moment, she would steal out to
see. She would not start, of course, till he was safely upstairs. But
she longed to be sure that the boat was there.

"Won't you have your cigarette in here?" she said, carelessly, as he
followed her towards the door.

"Here? Alone?"

His voice sounded surprised.

"I thought perhaps you wanted another glass of wine," she murmured with
a feigned indifference as she walked on.

"No," he said, "I am coming to the terrace with you."

"For a little while. But you m