Bella Donna Part 80

In the hall she stood still once more.

"You are an extraordinary person, Doctor Isaacson," she said. "Do you know it? I don't think any one else would come out suddenly like this to a place where he had a friend, without letting the friend know. Really, if it were not you, one might think it quite oddly surrept.i.tious."

She finished with a little laugh.

"I think Nigel will be very much surprised," she added.

"I hope you don't mean unpleasantly surprised? As I told you, I intended--"

"Oh, yes, I know all that," she interrupted. "But surely, it seems--well, almost a little bit unfriendly to be on the Nile and never to let him know. And I suppose--how long have you been in Egypt?"

"Oh, a very short time. You must not think I've delayed. On the contrary--"

"If you had delayed, it would have been quite reasonable. You have never seen Egypt before, have you?"

"Never."

"How long were you at Luxor?"

"One night, on the boat opposite to Luxor."

"Then what did you see?"

"Nothing at all."

She put up one hand and pulled gently at her veil.

"I thought I would do all the sight-seeing as I came down the river."

"Most people do it coming up. And I find you in a temple."

"It is the first I have entered. I couldn't pa.s.s Edfou."

"Why?"

"Perhaps because I felt that I should meet you in it."

He spoke now with the lightness of an agreeable man of the world paying a compliment to a pretty woman.

"My good angel perhaps guided me into the Holy of Holies because you were--shall I say dreaming in it?"

She moved and walked on.

"Were you long in Cairo?" she said.

"One night."

She stopped again.

"What an extraordinary rush!" she said.

"Yes, I've come along quickly."

"I suppose you've only a very limited time to do it all in? You're only taking a week or two?"

She turned her head towards him, and it seemed to him that her eyes were glittering with a strange excitement, a strange eagerness under her veil.

"I don't know," said Isaacson, carelessly. "I may stay on if I like it.

The fact is, Mrs. Armine, that having at last taken the plunge and deserted my patients, I'm enjoying myself amazingly. You've no idea how--"

"Your patients," she interrupted him again, "what will they do? Why, surely your whole practice will go to pieces!"

"It's very kind of you to trouble about that."

"Oh, I'm not troubling; I'm only wondering. I don't know you very well, but I confess I thought I had summed you up."

"Yes, and--?"

"And I thought you were a man of intense ambition, and a man who would rise to the very top of the tree."

"And now?"

"Well, this is hardly the way to do it. I'm--I'm quite sorry."

She said it very naturally. If his appearance had startled her very much--and that it had startled her almost terribly he felt certain--she was now recovering her equanimity. Her self-possession was returning.

"Women are very absurd," she continued. "They always admire the man who gets on, who forces his way to the front of the crowd."

Walking onward slowly side by side they came into the great outer court.

Isaacson had forgotten the wonderful temple. This woman had the power to grasp the whole of his attention, to fix it upon herself.

"Shall we sit down for a minute?" she said. "I'm quite tired with walking about."

She sauntered to a big block of stone on which a shadow fell, sat down carelessly, and put up a white and green sun-umbrella. For the first time since they had met Isaacson, remembering the death of Lord Harwich, wondered at her costume.

"Ah," she said, "you've heard, of course!"

He was startled by her sudden comprehension of his thought.

"Heard! what, Mrs. Armine?"

"About my brother-in-law's sudden death."

"I saw it in the paper."

"Well, I don't happen to have any thin mourning with me."

Her voice had changed again. When she said that it was as hard as a stone.