"Hassan!"
When Hassan answered, Isaacson bade him tell the Reis that he and his men could rest all the afternoon.
"I'm going to Edfou again. I shall probably spend some hours in the temple."
"Him very fine temple."
"Yes. I shall go alone and on foot."
A few minutes later he set out. He gained the temple, and stayed in it a long time. When he returned to the Fatma, the afternoon was waning. In the ethereal distance the Loulia still lay motionless.
"We goin' now?" asked Hassan.
Isaacson shook his head.
"We goin' to-night?"
"I'll tell you when I want to go. You needn't keep asking me questions."
The dragoman was getting terribly on Isaacson's nerves. For a moment Isaacson thought of dismissing him there and then, paying him handsomely and sending him ashore now, on the instant. The impulse was strong, but he resisted it. The fellow might possibly be useful. Isaacson looked at him meditatively and searchingly.
"What can I doin' for my gentlemans?"
"Nothing, except hold your tongue."
Hassan retired indignantly.
While he had looked at Hassan, Isaacson had considered a proposition and rejected it. He had thought of sending the dragoman with a note to the Loulia. It would be simple enough to invent an excuse for the note. Hassan might see Nigel--would see Nigel, if a hint were given him to do so. But he would no doubt also see Mrs. Armine; and--if Isaacson's instinct were not utterly astray in a wilderness of absurdity and error--she would make more use of Hassan than he ever could. The dragoman's face bore the sign-manual of treachery stamped upon it. And Mrs. Armine would be more clever in using treachery than Isaacson. He appreciated her talent at its full value.
While he had been in the temple of Edfou he had come to a conclusion with himself. Entirely alone in the semi-darkness of the most perfect building, and the most perfectly calm building, that he had ever entered, he had known his own calm and what his instinct told him in it. Had he not spent those hours in Edfou, possibly he might have denied the insistent voice of his instinct. Now he would heed that voice, certain that it was no unreasonable ear that was listening.
He saw the tapering mast of the Loulia against the thin, magical gold of the sky at sunset. He saw it against the even more magical primrose, pale green, soft red, of the after-glow. He saw it black as ink in the livid spasm of light that the falling night struck away from the river, the land, the sky. And then he saw it no more.