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"Go with Hamza," he said, in French. And she went, without another word, past the girl, and out of the room. Hamza, with a sign, told her to go in front of him. She went slowly down the passage, into the first saloon. There she hesitated, looked back. Hamza signed to her to go on. She passed under the Loulia's motto for the last time. On the sailors' deck she paused.
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.
Look at it, as I have often done, toward sunset from the western bank of the Nile, or climb the mound beyond its northern end, where stands the grand entrance, and you realize at once its nobility and solemn splendor. From the Loulia's deck it was a procession of great columns; that was all. But the decorative effect of these columns, soaring above the river and its vivid life, is fine.
For a long while she sat quite still, leaning her head on the cushion, hearing the singing and crying voices, the perpetual whisper of the water against the Loulia's sides, watching the gleaming Nile and the vessels that crept upon it going towards the south; and now, for the first time, there woke in her a desire to follow them up the river, to sail, too, into the golden south.
And when the water curled and eddied about the Loulia's prow, and the shores seemed slipping away and falling back into the primrose light of the north, and into the great dahabeeyah there came that mysterious feeling of life which thrills through the moving vessel, he flung up his arms, and uttered an exclamation that was like a mingled sigh and half-suppressed shout.
The boat touched the Loulia's side. A Nubian appeared. The singing on board abruptly ceased. Mrs. Armine quickly stood up in the boat. "Go to Luxor, Ibrahim! Go at once!" "I goin' quick, my lady." She sprang on board and stood to see him go. Only when the boat had diminished upon the dark water did she turn round. She was face to face with Hamza. "Hamza!" she said, startled.
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