She repeated that fact over and over in her mind as she sat and looked at the sunset. Ever since the morning she had been repeating it over and over. Even her violent outburst of temper had not stilled the insistent voice which in reiteration never wearied. In the first moments of her bitterness and anger, the voice had added, "Nigel shall pay me for this." It did not add this now, perhaps because into her fierceness had glided a weariness. She was paying for her passion. Perhaps Nigel would have to pay for that payment too. He was going away to the Fayyûm in two or three days. How she wished he was going to-night, that she need not be with him to-night, need not play the good woman, or the woman with developing goodness in her, to-night, now that she was weary from having been angry!
The tea had become almost black from standing. She poured out another cupful, and began to drink it without putting in milk or sugar. It tasted acrid, astringent, almost fierce, on her palate; it lifted the weariness from her, seemed to draw back curtains from a determined figure which slipped out naked into the light, the truth of herself untired and unashamed.
Nigel would have to reckon with that some day.
The gold was fading from the river now, the water was becoming like liquid silver, then, in a moment, like liquid steel. On the dahabeeyah, which began to look as if it were a long way off and were receding from her, shone a red and a blue light. Still the vehement voices of the brown fellahîn at work by the shadûf rose unwearied along the Nile. During the last days Mrs. Armine's ears had grown accustomed to these voices, so accustomed to them that it was already becoming difficult to her to realize that but a short time ago she had never heard them, never felt their curious influence, their driving power, which, mingled with other powers of sun and air, flogs the souls of men and women into desire of ungentle joys and of sometimes cruel pleasures. And now, with the fading away of the daylight, those powerful, savage, and sad voices gained in meaning, seemed no more to be issuing from the throats of toiling and sweating Egyptians, but to be issuing from the throat of this land of ruins and gold, where the green runs flush with the sand, and the lark sings in the morning, where the jackal whines by night.
For a long time Mrs. Armine listened, sitting absolutely still. Then suddenly she moved, got up, and went swiftly towards the house. Nigel was coming back. Mingling with the voices of the shadûf men she heard the voices of Baroudi's Nubians.