Then a handkerchief waved a greeting from the vessel to the men on shore,
but the hand that held it was a woman's. Ledscha would have recognised
it had the twilight been far deeper.

The features of the new arrival could no longer be distinguished; but she
must be young. An elderly woman would not have sprung so nimbly into the
skiff that was to convey her to the land.

The man who assisted her in doing so was the same sculptor, Hermon, for
whom she had watched with so much longing.

Again the blood mounted into Ledscha's cheeks, and when she saw the
stranger lay her hand upon the shoulder of the Alexandrian who, only
yesterday, had assured the young girl of his love with ardent vows, and
allow him to lift her out of the boat, she buried her little white teeth
deeply in her lips.

She had never seen Hermon in the society of a woman of his own class,
and, full of jealous displeasure; perceived with what zealous assiduity
he who bowed before no one in Tennis, paid court to the stranger no less
eagerly than did his friend Myrtilus.

The whole scene passed like a shadow in the dusk before Ledscha's eyes,
half dimmed by uneasiness, perplexity, and suddenly inflamed jealousy.

The Egyptian twilight is short, and when Hermon disappeared with the new-
comer it was no longer possible to recognise the man who entered the very
boat in which she was to have taken the nocturnal voyage with her lover,
and which was now rowed toward the Owl's Nest.