She returned his kiss.
"No, I'll see you off."
"But why?"
"Because I love to see you starting off in the night to the thing that gives you pleasure. That's my pleasure. Not always, because I'm too selfish. On the Nile you'll have to attend to me, to do everything I want. But just for these few days I'm going to be like an Eastern woman, at the beck of my lord and master. So I must see you start, and then--oh, how I shall sleep!"
He got up.
"P'r'aps I'll be out till morning. I wonder if Hamdi's got a goat."
He went away for his gun. In a very few minutes he left the camp, gaily calling to her, "Sleep well, Ruby! You look like a sorceress standing there all lit up by the fire. The flames are flickering over you. Good night--good night!"
His steps died away in the sands, his voice died away in the darkness.
She waited, standing perfectly still by the fire, for a long time. Her soul seemed running, rushing over the sands towards the ridge that met the sky, but her will kept her body standing beside the flames, until at last the sportsmen were surely far enough away.
"Ibrahim!"
"My lady?"
"How are we going?"
She was whispering to him beside the fire.
"Does it matter the camel-men knowing? Are they to know? Am I to ride or walk?"
"You leave everythin' to Ibrahim. You go in your tent, and presently I come."
She went at once into the tent, and sat down on a folding chair. A little round iron table stood before it. She leaned her arms on the table and laid her face against the back of her hand. Her cheek was burning. She sprang up, went to her dressing-case, unlocked it, drew out the boîte de beauté which Baroudi had given her in the orange-garden, and quickly made her face up, standing before the glass that was pinned to the canvas. Then she put on a short fur coat. The wind would be cold in the sands. She wondered how far they had to go.
And if Nigel should unexpectedly return, as nearly all husbands did on such occasions?
She could not bother about that. She felt too desperate to care; she felt in the grasp of fate. If the fate was to be untoward, so much the worse for her--and for Nigel. She meant to go beyond that ridge of the sand. That was all she knew. Quickly she buttoned the fur coat and put on a hat and gloves.
"Now we goin' to start."