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The next day the Loulia tied up under the garden of the Villa Androud, just beyond the stone promontory that diverted the strong current of the river. Nigel, too weak to walk up the bank to the house, was carefully carried by the Nubians.
She heard the sailors still singing on the Loulia, the faint barking of dogs, perhaps from the village of Luxor. She looked up at the stars mechanically, and remembered how Nigel had gazed at them when she had wanted him to be wholly intent upon her. Then she looked again, for a long time, at the blue light which shone from the Loulia's mast-head. Behind her the bushes rustled.
Isaacson knew it for a lamp fixed against the mast of the Loulia. He put his hand down to his hip-pocket. Yes, his revolver was safely there. He lit a cigar, then, moved by an after-thought, threw it away. Its tip hissed as it struck the river. He looked at that blue jewel, at the diaper of yellow below it, and he set out upon his nocturnal journey. At first he walked very slowly and cautiously.
He told me that he met you by chance in the temple of Edfou, that you seemed terrified at seeing him, that it was not you who asked him to come to the Loulia to see me, but that, on the contrary, he asked to come and you refused to let him. He said you even sent him a letter telling him not to come. He gave me that letter. Here it is. I have not read it."
Armine's obvious terror at his appearance; her lies, her omission to tell him her husband was ill until she realized that he Isaacson had already heard of the illness in Luxor; her pretence that his dangerous malady was only a slight indisposition caused by grief at the death of Lord Harwich; her endeavor to prevent Isaacson from coming on board the Loulia; the note she had sent by the felucca; his walk by night on the river bank till he came to the dahabeeyah, his eavesdropping, and how the words he overheard decided him to insist on seeing Nigel; the interview with Mrs.
Isaacson, she supposed, would bring her husband back to health, unless even now she found means to get rid of him. And Baroudi, what would he do? She looked across the river and saw the blue light. Why was the Loulia tied up there? Was Baroudi coming up to join her? If he did come! She walked faster, quite unconscious that she had quickened her pace.
He was but a gazer, entirely concentrated in watchfulness, sunk as it were in searching. The glass was a very powerful one, and of course Isaacson knew it; nevertheless, he was surprised by the apparent nearness of the Loulia as he looked. He could appreciate the beauty of her lines, distinguish her colour, the milky white picked out with gold.
"Why, because Doctor Isaacson doesn't believe in me in any capacity." "But I do." Again she noticed the amazing expressiveness of his face. "Yes," she said, "I know. You are different." She opened the door and passed into the room. Directly she was in it she heard the Nubian sailors on the Loulia beginning their serenade. She wanted to rush to it, now, at once, without one moment of waiting.
"Ibrahim," she almost whispered, "is Baroudi on board the Loulia?" "Yes, my lady." She could hardly repress an exclamation. "He is? Ibrahim" in her astonishment she put one hand on his shoulder and grasped it tightly "to-night, as soon as dinner is over, you are to have a felucca ready at the foot of the garden. D'you understand?" He looked at her very seriously.
I shall probably spend some hours in the temple." "Him very fine temple." "Yes. I shall go alone and on foot." A few minutes later he set out. He gained the temple, and stayed in it a long time. When he returned to the Fatma, the afternoon was waning. In the ethereal distance the Loulia still lay motionless. "We goin' now?" asked Hassan. Isaacson shook his head. "We goin' to-night?"
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