"I did feel a little uneasy, I confess."
"How did you come to-night?"
"I walked."
"Walked? Alone?"
"Quite alone."
"All that way! I'll send you back in the felucca."
"Oh, that will be all right."
"No, no, you shall have the felucca."
She touched an electric bell. Hamza came.
"The felucca, Hamza."
"Yes."
He went.
"They'll get it ready."
She moved some cushions. Isaacson noticed a yellowish tinge about her temples, just beyond the corners of her eyes above the cheek-bones. Most of her face was not made up, though there were one or two dabs of powder as well as the rouge.
"They'll get it ready in a moment," she repeated.
She turned towards him, smiling suddenly.
"And so you felt uneasy, and thought you'd hear a little more, and came at night so as not to startle or disturb him. That was good of you. The fact is, I didn't tell him I had met you to-day. I intended to, but when I got here I gave up the idea."
"Why was that?"
"He'd been reading all the notices about Harwich, and they'd utterly upset him."
Suddenly she noticed the tiny drops of blood on her fingers.
"Oh!" she said.
She put her hand up to the front of her gown, drew out a handkerchief, and pressed her fingers with it.
"How stupid of me!"
Hamza appeared.
"Ah, the felucca is ready!" said Mrs. Armine.
Isaacson leaned back quietly, and made himself comfortable on the broad divan.
"In a minute, Hamza!" she said.
Hamza went away.
"That's a marvellous fellow you've got," said Isaacson.
Although he spoke almost under his breath, he managed to introduce into his voice the quiet sound of a man of the world very much at his ease, and with a pleasant half-hour before him. "I saw him praying this afternoon."
"Praying?"
"Yes, when he brought your note."
A look of horror crept over her face, and was gone in an instant.
"Oh, all these people pray."
She sat more forward on the divan, almost like one about to get up. Isaacson crossed one leg over the other.
"What you told me this morning did make me uneasy about your husband," he said, leaving the Mohammedan world abruptly.
"Then I must have spoken very carelessly," she said, quickly.
All the time they were talking, she made perpetual slight movements, and was never perfectly still.
"Then you are not at all uneasy about his condition?"
"I--I didn't say that. Naturally, a wife is a little anxious if her husband has been ill. But he is so much better than he was that it would be foolish of me to be upset."