"I'm glad," he said, with the Englishman's almost blunt simplicity--"I'm glad. I wish Isaacson knew."
She felt as if she frowned, but not a wrinkle came on her forehead.
"I didn't tell you," he added, "but I wrote to Isaacson the other day."
"Did you?"
Her hands met in her lap, and her fingers clasped.
"Yes, I sent him quite a good letter. I told him we were going up the Nile in Baroudi's boat, and how splendid you were looking, and how immensely happy we were. I told him we were going to cut all the travellers, and just live for our two selves in the quiet places where there are no steamers and no other dahabeeyahs. And I told him how magnificently well I was."
"Oh, treating him as the great Doctor, I suppose!"
She unclasped her hands, and took hold of the rudimentary arms of her chair.
"No. But I felt expansive--riotously well--when I was writing, and I just stuck it down with all the rest."
"And the rest?"
She leaned forward a little, as if she wanted to see the sunset better, but soon she looked at him.
"Oh, I let him understand just how it is between you and me. And I told him about the dahabeeyah, what a marvel it is, and about Baroudi, and how Ibrahim put Baroudi up to the idea of letting it to us."
"I see."
"How these chairs creak!" he said. "Yours is making a regular row."
She got up.
"You aren't going down again?"
"No. Let us walk about."
"All right."
He joined her and they began slowly to pace up and down, while the gold grew fainter in the sky, fainter upon the river. She kept silence, and perhaps communicated her wish for silence to him, for he did not speak until the sunset had faded away, and the world of water, green flats, desert, and arid hills grew pale in the pause before the afterglow. Then at last he said: "What is it, Ruby? What are you thinking about so seriously?"
"I don't know."
She looked at him, and seemed to take a resolve.
"Yes, I do."
"Have I said something that has vexed you? Are you vexed at my writing to Isaacson to tell him about our happiness?"
"Not vexed, no. But somehow it seems to take off the edge of it a little. But men don't understand such things, so it's no use talking of it."
"But I want to understand everything. You see, Isaacson is my friend. Isn't it natural that I should let him know of my happiness?"
"Oh, yes, I suppose so. Never mind. What does it matter?"