"What is the meaning of that Arabic writing, Mahmoud Baroudi?" said Mrs.
Armine on the following afternoon, as she stood with him and her husband
upon the lower deck of the _Loulia_, at the foot of the two steps which
led down to the big door dividing the lines of living-rooms from the
quarters of the Nubian sailors. The door was white, with mouldings of
gold, and the inscription above it was in golden characters.
"It looks so significant that I must know what it means," she added.
"It is taken from the Koran, madame."
"And it means?"
He fixed his great eyes upon her.
"'The fate of every man have we bound about his neck.'"
"'The fate of every man have we bound about his neck,'" she repeated,
slowly. "So that is the motto for the _Loulia_!"
She was standing quite still, staring up at the cabalistic signs beneath
which she was going to pass.
"Do you dislike it, madame?"
"No, it's strong, but--well, it leaves no loophole for escape, and it
rather suggests a prison."
"We are in the prison of our lives, and we are in the prison of
ourselves," he answered, calmly.
She dropped her eyes from the words.
"Yes?" she said, looking at him like one who asks for more.
"Prison!" said Nigel, behind her. "I hate that word. You're wrong,
Baroudi. Life is a fine freedom, if we choose it to be so, and we can
act in it according to our own free-will. Our fate is not bound about
our necks. It is only we ourselves who can bind it there."
"All that is not at all in my belief," returned Baroudi, inflexibly.
"Here are cabins for servants."
He led them into a passage, and pointed to little doors on the right and
left.
"And here is my room for working and arranging all I have to do. I
believe you English call it a 'den.'"
He opened a door that faced them at the end of the passage, and preceded
them into his "den." The effect of this chamber was that it was a
"double room," for an exquisite screen of mashrebeeyeh work, in the
centre of which was a small round arch, divided it into two
compartments. On each side of this arch, facing the entrance door, were
divans covered with embroideries and heaped with enormous cushions.
Prayer-rugs covered the floor, prayer-rugs of very varied patterns and
colours, on which yellows, greens, mauves, pinks, reds, purples, and
browns dwelt in perfect accord; on which vases were seen with trees,
lamps with flowers, strange and conventional buildings with ships, with
chains, with pedestals, with baskets of fruit, mingled together,
apparently at haphazard, yet forming a blend that was restful. By the
windows there were lattices of mashrebeeyeh work, which could be opened
and closed at will. At present they were open. Beneath them were fitted
book-cases containing rows of books, in English and French, many of them
works on agriculture, on building, on mining, on the sugar and cotton
industries in various parts of the world. There was a large
writing-table of lacquer-work, on which stood a movable electric lamp
without a shade, in the midst of a rummage of pamphlets and papers. Near
it were a coffee-table and two deep arm-chairs. From the ceiling, which
was divided into compartments painted in dark red and blue, hung a heavy
lamp by a chain of gilded silver. A stick of incense burned in a gilded
holder. The dining-room, on the other side of the screen, was fitted
with divans running round the walls, and contained a large table and a
number of chairs with curved backs. The table was covered with a long
and exquisitely embroidered Indian cloth, of which the prevailing colour
was a brilliant orange-red, that glowed and had a sheen which was almost
fiery. In the centre of this table stood a tawdry Japanese vase, worth,
perhaps, five or six shillings. A lovely bracket of carved wood fixed to
the wall held a cheap cuckoo-clock from Switzerland.
Mrs. Armine looked around in silence, with eyes that missed no detail.
The clock whirred, a minute door flew open, the cuckoo appeared, and the
two notes that are the cry of the English spring went thinly out to the
Nile. Then the cuckoo disappeared, and the little door shut sharply.
Mrs. Armine smiled.
"You bought that?" she asked.
"Yes, madame. Everything here was bought by me, and arranged according
to my poor judgment."
He opened the door, and led them into a long passage with a shining
parquetted floor.
"Here are the bedrooms, madame."
He pushed back two or three doors, showing beautiful little cabins,
evidently furnished from Paris, with bedsteads, mosquito-curtains, long
mirrors, small arm-chairs in white, and green and rose-colour; walls
painted ivory-white; and delicate, pretty, but rather frivolous,
curtains and portieres, with patterns of flowers tied up with ribands,
and flying and perching birds. All the toilet arrangements were perfect,
and each room had a recess in which was a large enamelled bath.
"That is my bedroom, madame," said Baroudi, pointing to a door which he
did not open. "It is the largest on the boat. And here is my room for
sitting alone. When I want to be disturbed by no one, when I want to
smoke the keef, to eat the hashish, or just to sit by myself and forget
my affairs, and dream quietly for a little, I shut myself in here."
An embroidered curtain, the ground of which was orange colour, covered
with silks of various hues, faced them at the end of the corridor.
Baroudi pulled aside this curtain, pushed back a sliding door of wood
that was almost black, and said:
"Will you go in first, madame?"
Mrs. Armine stepped in, with an almost cautious slowness.
She found herself in a large saloon, which took in the whole width of
the stern of the dahabeeyah. The end of this saloon widened out and was
crescent-shaped, and contained a low dais with curving divans, divided
by two sliding doors which were now pushed back in their recesses,
giving access to a big balcony that looked out over the Nile and that
was protected by an awning. The wooden ceiling was cut up into lozenges
of black and gold, and was edged by minute inscriptions from the Koran,
in gold on a black ground. All the windows had lattices of mashrebeeyeh
work fitted to them, and all these lattices were closed. Against the
walls, which were as dark in colour as the mashrebeeyeh work, there were
a number of carved brackets, on which were placed various extremely
common things--cheap and gaudy vases from Naples and Paris, two more
Swiss cuckoo-clocks, a third clock with a blue and white china face--and
a back that looked as if were made of brass, a musical-box, and a
grotesque monster, like a dragon with a dog's head, in rough yellow and
blue earthenware. There were no chairs in the room, though there were
some made of basket-work on the balcony, but all the lower part of the
wall space was filled with broad divans. In the centre of the floor
there was a sunken receptacle of marble, containing earth, in which
dwarf palms were growing, and a faskeeyeh, or little fountain, which
threw up a minute jet of water, upon which airily rose and fell a gilded
ball about the size of a pea. All over the floor were strewn exquisite
rugs. The room was pervaded by a faint but heavy perfume, which had upon
the senses an almost narcotic effect.
"What a strange room!" said Mrs. Armine.
She had stood quite still near the door. Now she walked forward,
followed by the two men, until she had passed the faskeeyeh and had
reached the foot of the dais. There she turned round, with her back to
the light that came in through the narrow doorways leading to the
balcony. Baroudi had shut the door by which they had come in, and had
pulled over it a heavy orange-coloured curtain, which she now saw for
the first time. Although lovely in itself both in colour and material,
fiercely lovely, like the skin of some savage beast, it did not blend
with the rest of the room, with the dim hues of the superb embroideries
and prayer-rugs, with the dark wood of the lattices that covered the
windows. Like the cheap clocks on the exquisite brackets, and the vulgar
ornaments from Naples and Paris, it seemed to reveal a certain
childishness in this man, a bad taste that was naive in its crudity, but
daring in its determination to be gratified. Oddly, almost violently,
this curtain, these clocks and vases, the musical-box, even the tiny
gilded ball that rose and fell in the fountain, displayed a part of him
strangely different from that which had selected the almost miraculously
beautiful rugs, and the embroideries on the divans. Exquisite taste was
married with a commonness that was glaring.
Mrs. Armine wished she could see his bedroom.
"I wish--" she began, and stopped.
"Yes, madame?" said Baroudi.
"What is it, Ruby?" asked Nigel.
"You'll laugh at me. But I wish you would both go out upon the balcony,
shut the doors, and leave me for a minute shut up alone in here. I think
I should feel as if I were in the heart of an Eastern house."
"In a harim, do you mean?" asked Nigel.
"That--perhaps. Do go."
Baroudi smiled, showing his rows of tiny teeth.
"Come, Mr. Armeen!" he said.
He stepped out on to the balcony, followed by Nigel, and pulled out from
the recess the first of the sliding doors.
"You really wish the other, too?" he asked, looking in upon Mrs. Armine.
"You will be quite in the dark."
"Shut it!" she said, in a low voice.
He pulled out the second door. Gently it slid across the oblong of
sunlight, blotting out the figures of the two men from her sight.
Baroudi had said that she would be quite in the dark. That was not
absolutely true. How and from where she could not determine, a very
faint suggestion--it was hardly more than that--of light stole in to
show the darkness to her. She went to the divan on the starboard side of
the vessel, felt for some cushions, piled them together, and lay down,
carefully, so as not to disarrange her hat. The divan was soft and
yielding. It held and caressed her body, almost as if it were an
affectionate living thing that knew of her present desire. The cushions
supported her arm as she lay sideways--listening, and keeping perfectly
still.
She had some imagination, although she was not a highly or a very
sensitively imaginative woman, and now she left her imagination at play.
It took her with it into the heart of an Eastern house which was
possessed by an Eastern master. Where was the house, in what strange
land of sunshine? She did not know or care to know. And indeed, it
mattered little to her--an Eastern woman whose life was usually bounded
by a grille.
For she imagined herself an Eastern woman, subject to the laws and the
immutable customs of the unchanging East, and she was in the harim of a
rich Oriental, to whom she belonged body and soul, and who adored her,
but as the man of the East adores the woman who is both his mistress and
his slave. For years she had ruled men, and trodden them under her feet.
She had lived for that--the ruling of men by her beauty and her clever
determination. Now she imagined herself no longer possessing but
entirely possessed; no longer commanding, but utterly obedient. What a
new experience that would be! All the capricious womanhood of her seemed
to be alert and tingling at the mere thought of it. Instead of having
slaves, to be herself a slave!
She moved a little on the divan. The heavy perfume that pervaded the
room seemed to be creeping about her with an intention--to bring her
under its influence. She heard the very faint and liquid murmur of the
faskeeyeh, where the tiny gilded ball was rising, poising, sinking,
governed by the aspiring and subsiding water. That, too, was a slave--a
slave in the Eastern house of Baroudi.
Slowly she closed her eyes, in the Eastern house of Baroudi.
Here Baroudi lay, as she was lying, and smoked the keef, and ate the
hashish, and dreamed.
He would never be the slave of a woman. She felt sure of that. But he
might make a woman his slave. At moments, when he looked at her, he had
the eyes of a slave-owner. But he might adore a slave with a cruel
adoration. She felt cruelty in him, and it attracted her, it lured her,
it responded to something in her nature which understood and respected
cruelty, and which secretly despised gentleness. In his love he would be
cruel. Never would he be quite at the feet of the woman. His eyes had
told her that, had told it to her with insolence.
The gilded ball in the faskeeyeh, the slave covered with jewels in the
harim.
She stretched out her arms along the cushions; she stretched out her
limbs along the divan, her long limbs that were still graceful and
supple.
How old did Baroudi think her?
Arabs never know their ages. A man, a soldier whom she had known, had
told her that once, had told her that Arabs of sixty declare themselves
to be twenty-five, not from vanity, but merely because they never reckon
the years. Baroudi would probably never think of her as Englishmen
thought of her, would never "bother about" her age. She had seen no
criticism of that kind in his eyes when they stared at her. Probably he
believed her to be quite young, if he thought of her age at all. More
probably he did not think about the matter.
She was in the Eastern house of Baroudi.
When she and Nigel had left London for Egypt she had imagined herself
one day, if not governing London--the "London" that had once almost
worshipped her beauty--at least spurning it as Lady Harwich. She had
wrapped herself in that desire, that dream. All her thoughts had been
connected with London, with people there. Some day Lord Harwich would
die or get himself killed. Zoe Harwich would sink reluctantly into "Zoe,
Lady Harwich," and she, once the notorious Mrs. Chepstow, would be
mistress of Harwich House, Park Lane; of Illington Park, near Ascot; of
Goldney Chase in Derbyshire; of Thirlton Castle in Scotland; and of
innumerable shooting-lodges, to say nothing of houses at Brighton and
Newmarket. Society might not receive her, but society would have to envy
her. And perhaps--in the end--for are not all things possible in the
social world of to-day?--perhaps in the end she would impose herself,
she would be accepted again because of her great position. She had felt
that her cleverness and her force of will made even that possible.
Harwich's letter had swept the dream away, and now, the first shock of
her new knowledge passed, though not the anger, the almost burning sense
of wrong that had followed immediately upon it, she was
characteristically readjusting her point of view upon her future. She
had schemed for a certain thing; she had taken the first great step
towards the realization of her scheme; and then she had suddenly come
upon catastrophe. And now her thoughts began to turn away from London.
The London thoughts were dying with the London hopes. "All that is
useless now." That was what her mind was saying, bitterly, but also with
decision. Schooled by a life filled with varying experiences, Mrs.
Armine had learnt one lesson very thoroughly--she had learnt to cut her
losses. How was she going to cut this loss?
She was in the Eastern house of Baroudi.
Only a few hours ago she had looked out upon Egypt and things Egyptian
almost as a traveller looks upon a world through which he is rushing in
a train, a world presented to him for a brief moment, but with whose
inhabitants he will never have anything to do, in whose life he will
never take part. She had to be in Egypt for a while, but all her desires
and hopes and intentions were centred in London. There her destiny would
be played out, there and in the land of which London was the beating
heart.
Now she must centre her desires, her hopes, her intentions elsewhere,
if she centred them anywhere. She must centre them upon Nigel, must
centre them in the Fayyum, in the making of crops to grow where only
sand had been, both in the Fayyum and in another place, or she must
centre them--
She smelt the heavy perfume; she smoothed the silken pillows with her
long fingers; she stretched her body on the soft divan; she listened to
the liquid whisper of the faskeeyeh.
There were many sorts of lives in the world. She had had many
experiences, but how many experiences she had never had! No longer did
she feel herself to be a traveller rushing onward through a land of
which she would never know, or care to know, anything. The train was
slackening speed. She saw the land more clearly. Details came into view,
making their strange and ardent appeal. The train would presently stop.
And she would step out of it, would face the new surroundings, would
face the novel life.
Suddenly she distended her nostrils to inhale the perfume more strongly,
her hands closed upon the silken cushions with a grip that was almost
angry, and something within her, the something that tries to command
from its secret place, scourged her imagination to force it to more
violent efforts--in the Eastern house of Baroudi.
"Ruby! Ruby!"
One of the sliding doors was pushed back, the sunlight came in, tempered
by the shade thrown by the awning, and she saw the little ball dancing
in the faskeeyeh, and her husband looking inquiringly upon her, framed
in the oblong of the doorway.
"What on earth are you doing?"
"Nothing!" she said, sitting up with a brusque movement.
He laughed.
"I believe you were taking a nap."
She got up.
"To tell the truth, I was almost asleep."
She stood up, put her hands to her hat, to her hair, and with a slight
but very intelligent movement sent the skirt of her gown into place.
"Let me out," she said.
Nigel drew back, and she stepped out upon the balcony, where Baroudi was
leaning upon the railing, looking over the sunlit Nile. He turned round
slowly and very calmly to meet her, moving with the almost measured ease
of the very supple and strong man, drew forward a basket chair, arranged
a cushion for her politely, but rather carelessly, and not at all
cleverly, and said, as she sat down:
"You like the heart of my Eastern house?"
"How do you manage the fountain?" she asked.
He embarked upon a clear and technical explanation, but when he had said
a very few words, she stopped him.
"Please don't! You are spoiling my whole impression. I oughtn't to have
asked."
"Baroudi is a very practical man," said Nigel. "I only wish I had him as
my overseer in the Fayyum."
"If I can ever give you advice I shall be very glad," said Baroudi. "I
know all about agriculture in my country."
Mrs. Armine leaned back, and looked at the broad river, upon which there
were many native boats creeping southward with outspread sails, at the
columns of the great Temple of Luxor standing up boldly upon the eastern
bank, at the cloud of palm-trees northward beyond the village, at the
far-off reaches of water, at the bare and precipitous hills that keep
the deserts of Libya. At all these features of the landscape she looked
with eyes that seemed to be new.
"Talk about agriculture to my husband, Mahmoud Baroudi," she said.
"Forget I am here, both of you."
"But--"
"_Pas de compliments!_ This is my first visit to a dahabeeyah. Your Nile
is making me dream. If only the sailors were singing!"
"They shall sing."
He went up a few steps, and looked over the upper deck; then he called
out some guttural words. Almost instantly the throb of the _daraboukkeh_
was audible, and then a nasal cry: "Al-lah!"
"And now--talk about agriculture!"
Baroudi turned away to Nigel, and began to talk to him in a low voice,
while Mrs. Armine sat quite still, always watching the Nile, and always
listening to the sailors singing. Presently tea was brought, but even
then she preserved, smiling, her soft but complete detachment.
"Go on talking," she said. "You don't know how happy I am."
She looked at her husband, and added:
"I am drinking Nile water to-day."
Into his face there came a strong look of joy, which stirred irony in
the deeps of her nature. He did not say anything to her, but in a moment
he renewed his conversation with Baroudi, energetically, vivaciously,
with an ardour which she had deliberately given him, partly out of
malice, but partly also to gain for herself a longer lease of
tranquillity. For she had spoken the truth. She was drinking Nile water
to-day, and she wanted to drink more deeply.
The river was like a dream, she thought. The great boats, with their
lateen sails and their grave groups of silent brown men, crept
noiselessly by like the vessels that pass in a dream. Against the sides
of the _Loulia_ she heard the Nile water whispering softly, whispering
surely to her. From the near bank, mingling with the loud and nasal song
of the Nubian sailors, rose the fierce and almost tragic songs of the
fellahin working the shadufs. How many kinds of lives there were in the
world!
The blow that had fallen upon Mrs. Armine had made her unusually
thoughtful, unusually introspective, unusually sensitive to all
influences from without; had left her vibrating like a musical
instrument that had been powerfully struck by a ruthless hand. The gust
of fury that had shaken her had stirred her to a fierce and powerful
life, had roused up all her secret energies of temper, of will of
desire, all her greed to get the best out of life, to wring dry, as it
were, of their golden juices every one of the fleeting years. "To-morrow
we die." Those who believe that, as she believed it, desire to live as
no believer in a prolonged future in other worlds can ever desire to
live--here, for the little day--and never had she felt that hungry wish
more than she felt it now. Through her dream she felt it, almost as a
victim of ardent pain feels that pain, without suffering under it, after
an injection of morphia. If she could not have the life to which she had
looked forward of triumph in England, she must have in its place some
other life that suited her special temperament, some other life that
would answer to the call within her for material satisfactions, for
strong bodily pleasures, for the joys of the pagan, the unbeliever, who
is determined to "make the most of" the short span of human life on
earth.
How could she now have that other life with Nigel? He would never be
Lord Harwich. He would never be anything but Nigel Armine, a man of
moderate means interested in Egyptian agriculture, with a badly let
property in England, and a strip of desert in the Fayyum. He would never
be anything except that--and her husband, the man who had "let her in."
She did not mentally add to the tiny catalogue--"and the man who loved
her."
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. Instead of the longing to return to
and reign in England, came the desire to push England out of her life,
almost to kick it away scornfully and have done with it for ever. Since
she could never reign in England, she felt that she hated England.
"In the summer? Oh, I always spend the summer in England."
Nigel was speaking cheerfully. She began to attend to his conversation
with Baroudi, but she still looked out to the Nile, and did not change
her position. They were really talking about agriculture, and apparently
with enthusiasm. Nigel was giving details of his efforts in the Fayyum.
Now they discussed sand-ploughs. It seemed an unpromising subject, but
they fell upon it with ardour, and found it strangely fruitful. Even
Baroudi seemed to be deeply interested in sand-ploughs. Mrs. Armine
forgot the Nile. She was not at all interested in sand-ploughs, but she
was interested in this other practical side of Baroudi, which was now
being displayed to her. Very soon she knew that of all these details
connected with land, its cultivation, the amount of profit it could be
made to yield in a given time, the eventual probabilities of profit in a
more distant future, he was a master. And Nigel was talking to him, was
listening to him, as a pupil talks and listens to a master. The greedy
side of Mrs. Armine was very practical, as Meyer Isaacson had realized,
and therefore she was fitted to appreciate at its full value the
practical side of Baroudi. She felt that here was a man who knew very
well how and where to tap the streams whose waters are made of gold,
and, as romance seduces many women, so, secretly, this powerful
money-making aptitude seduced her temperament, or an important part of
it. She was fascinated by this aptitude, but presently she was still
more fascinated by the subtle use that he was making of it.
He was deliberately rousing up Nigel's ambitions connected with labour,
was deliberately stinging him to activity, deliberately prompting him to
a sort of manly shame at the thought of his present life of repose. But
he was doing it with an apparent carelessness that was deceptive and
very subtle; he was doing it by talking about himself, and his own
energy, and his own success, not conceitedly, but simply, and in
connection with Nigel's plans and schemes and desires.
Why was he doing this? Did he want to send Nigel to spend the winter in
the Fayyum? And did he know that Nigel intended to "rig up something" in
the Fayyum for her?
[Illustration]
She began to wonder, to wonder intensely, why Baroudi was stirring up
Nigel's enthusiasm for work. It seemed as if, for the moment, the two
men had entirely forgotten that she was there, had forgotten that in the
world there was such a phenomenon as woman. She had a pleasant sensation
of listening securely at a key-hole. Usually she desired to attract to
herself the attention of every man who was near her. To-day she wished
that the conversation between her husband and Baroudi might be
indefinitely prolonged; for a strange sense of well-being, of calmness,
indeed of panacea, was beginning to steal at last upon her, after the
excitement, the bitter anger that had upset her spirit. It seemed to her
as if in that moment of utter repose in the darkness of the chamber near
the fountain a hypnotic hand had been laid upon her, as if it had not
yet been removed. Really she was already captured by the dahabeeyah
spell, although she did not know it. A dahabeeyah is the home of dreams,
and of a deeply quiet physical well-being. Mrs. Armine was a very
sensuous woman, and sensitive to all sensuous impressions; so now, while
her husband talked eagerly, enthusiastically, of the life of activity
and work, she received from the Nile its curious gift of bodily
indolence and stillness. Her body never moved, never wished to move, in
the deep and cushioned chair, was almost like a body morphia-stricken;
but her mind was alert, and judging the capacities of these two men. And
still it was seeking secretly the answer to a "Why?" when Nigel at
length exclaimed:
"Anyhow, I meant to get off by the train to-morrow night. And you? When
are you starting up the river?"
"I have a tug. I go away to-night."
"To Armant?"
"To Armant for some days. Then I go farther up the river. I have
interests near Kom Ombos. I shall be away some time, and then drop down
to Assiout. I have nothing more to do here."
"Interests in Assiout, too?"
"Oh, yes; at Assiout I have a great many. And just beyond here I have
some--a little way up the river on the western bank."
"Lands?"
"I have orange-gardens there."
"I wonder you can manage to look after it all--sugar, cotton, quarries,
house property, works, factories. Phew! It almost makes one's head spin.
And you see into everything yourself!"
"Where the master's eye does not look, the servant's is turned away. Do
you not find it so in the Fayyum?"
"I shall know in two or three days."
Nigel suddenly looked round at his wife.
"I hear you," she said, slowly. "You had forgotten all about me, but I
was listening to you."
She moved, and sat straight up, putting her hands on the broad cushioned
arms of the chair.
"I was receiving a lesson," she added.
"A lesson, Ruby?" said Nigel.
"A lesson in humility."
Both men tried to make her explain exactly what she meant, but she would
not satisfy their curiosity.
"You have brains enough to guess," was all she said.
"We must be going, Nigel. Look! it is nearly sunset. Soon the river will
be turning golden."
As she said the last word, she looked at Baroudi, and her voice seemed
to linger on the word as on a word beloved.
"Won't you stay and see the sunset from here, madame?" he said.
"I am sure you have lots to do. I have been listening to some purpose,
and I know you are a man of affairs, and can have very little time for
social nonsense, such as occupies the thoughts of women. I feel almost
guilty at having taken up even one of your hours."
Nigel thought there was in her voice a faint sound as if she were
secretly aggrieved.
Baroudi made a polite rejoinder, in his curiously careless and calmly
detached way, but he did not press them again to stay any longer, and
Nigel felt certain that he had many things to do--preparations,
perhaps, to make for his departure that evening. He was decidedly not a
"woman's man," but was a keen and pertinacious man of affairs, who liked
the activities of life and knew how to deal with men.
He bade them good-bye on the deck of the sailors.
Just before she stepped down into the waiting felucca, Mrs. Armine, as
if moved by an impulse she could not resist, turned her head and gazed
at the strange Arabic Letters of gold that were carved above the doorway
through which she had once more passed.
"The fate of every man have we bound about his neck."
Baroudi followed her eyes, and a smile, that had no brightness in it,
flickered over his full lips, then died, leaving behind it an impassible
serenity.
That night, just when the moon was coming, the _Loulia_, gleaming with
many lights, passed the garden of the Villa Androud, and soon was lost
in the night, going towards the south.
On the following evening, by the express that went to Cairo, Nigel
started for the Fayyum.