He took off his hat and held out his hand.
"Then it was the Loulia I saw!" he said.
She gave him her hand and drew it away.
"You are in Egypt!" she said.
Although in the darkness her walk had been familiar to him, had prepared him for the coming up to him of Bella Donna, her voice now seemed utterly unfamiliar. It was ugly and grating. He remembered that in London he had thought her voice one of her greatest charms, one of her most perfectly tempered weapons. Had he been mistaken? Had he never heard it aright? Or had he not heard it aright now?
"What are you doing in Egypt?" she said.
Her voice was ugly, almost hideous. But now he realized that its timbre was completely changed by some emotion which had for the moment entire possession of her.
"What are you doing in Egypt?" she repeated.
Isaacson cleared his throat. Afterwards he knew that he had done this because of the horrible hoarseness of Mrs. Armine's voice.
"I was feeling overworked, run down. I thought I would take a holiday."
She was silent for a minute. Then she said: "Did you let my husband know you were coming? Does he know you are in Egypt?"
In saying this her voice became more ugly, less like hers, as if the emotion that governed her just then made a crescendo, became more vital and more complex.
"No. I left England unexpectedly. A sudden impulse!"
He was speaking almost apologetically, without meaning to do so. He realized this, and pulled himself up sharply.
"I told no one of my plans. I thought I would give Nigel a surprise."
He said it coolly, with quite a different manner.
"Nigel!" she said.
Isaacson was aware when she spoke that he had called his friend by his Christian name for the first time.
"I thought I would give you and your husband a surprise. I hope you forgive me?"
After what seemed to him an immensely long time she answered: "What is there to forgive? Everybody comes to the Nile. One is never astonished to see any one turn up."
Her voice this time was no longer ugly. It began to have some of the warm and the lazy charm that he had found in it when he met her in London. But the charm sounded deliberate, as if it was thrust into the voice by a strong effort of her will.
"I use the word 'see,'" she added. "But really here one can't see any one or anything properly. Let us go out."
And she passed out of the sanctuary into the dim but less dark hall that lay beyond. Isaacson followed her.