"Here comes my gentleman!" he added, suddenly dropping his arms.

Nigel returned from the darkness of the garden.

"Hulloh, Ibrahim!"

"Hulloh, my gentleman!"

"Keeping your mistress company while I was gone? That is right."

Ibrahim smiled, and sauntered away, going towards the bank of the Nile.
His golden robe faded among the little trunks of the orange-trees.

"It was the gardener's dog," said Nigel, letting himself down into his
chair with a sigh of satisfaction. "I've made him feed the poor brute.
It was nearly starving. That's why it came to us."

"I see."

"Al-lah!" he murmured, saying the word like an Eastern man.

He looked into her eyes.

"The first word you hear in the night from Egypt, Ruby, Egypt's night
greeting to you. I have heard that song up the river in Nubia often,
but--oh, it's so different now!"

During her long experience in a life that had been complex and full of
changes, Mrs. Armine had heard the sound of love many times in the
voices of men. But she had never heard till this moment Nigel's full