"Ruby," Nigel said, as he stood with her on the deck of the Loulia and looked up at the Arabic letters of gold inscribed above the doorway through which they were going to pass, "what is the exact meaning of those words? Baroudi told us that day at Luxor, but I've forgotten. It was some lesson of fate, something from the Koran. D'you remember?"
She turned up her veil over the brim of her burnt-straw hat. "Let me see!" she said.
She seemed to make an effort of memory, and lines came on her generally smooth forehead.
"I fancy it was 'The fate of every man have we bound about his neck,' or something very like that."
"Yes, that was it. We discussed it, and I said I wasn't a fatalist."
"Did you? Come along. Let's explore."
"Our floating home--yes."
He took hold of her arm.
"If my fate is bound about my neck, it's a happy fate," he said--"a fate I can wear as a jewel instead of bearing as a burden."
They went down the steps together, and vanished through the doorway into the shadows beyond.
The Loulia was moored at Keneh, not far from the temple of Denderah. She had been sent up the river from Assiout, where Baroudi had left her when he had finished his business affairs and was ready to start for Cairo. It was Nigel's wish that he and his wife should join her there.
"Denderah was the first temple you and I saw together," he said. "Let's see it more at our leisure. And let us ask Aphrodite to bless our voyage."
"Hathor! What, are you turning pagan?" she said.
He laughed as he looked into her blue eyes.
"Scarcely; but she was the Egyptian Goddess of Beauty, and I don't think she could deny her blessing to you."
Then she was looking radiant!
That cold which had made her shudder in the night by the sacred lake had been left in the desolation of Libya. Surely, it could never come to her here in the golden warmth of Upper Egypt. She said to herself that she would not shudder again now that she had escaped from that blanched end of the world where desperation had seized her.
The day of departure for the Nile journey had come, and Nigel and she set foot upon the Loulia for the first time as proprietors.
They passed the doors of the servants' cabins, and came into their own quarters. Ibrahim followed softly behind with a smiling face, and Hamza, standing still in the sunshine beneath the golden letters, looked after them imperturbably.