"I don't say they were not."
"Then what d'you mean? There was nobody else on board with me."
"Yes, there was."
"There was? Then I never saw him! Do you mean to say there was some one hidden on board? What are you talking about, Isaacson?"
He was becoming greatly, almost angrily excited.
"Armine, the compensation I want is this. I don't want to clear out and leave you here in Egypt; I want to take you away with me."
"Take me away? Where to?"
"Anywhere--back to England."
"We are going to England as soon as I'm quite strong. But you haven't told me! You say I've been poisoned. I want to know by whom."
* * * * * "But perhaps you don't know! Do you know?"
Isaacson got up. He felt as if he could not speak any more sitting down.
"If you will only give me my compensation, let me take you away quietly--I'm a doctor. Nobody will think anything of it--I need say nothing more."
"Take me away! But I'm nearly well now, and there can be no more danger."
"If you come away with me--no!"
"But you forget, I'm not alone. I must consult my wife."
"That is what I don't wish you to do."
"Don't? You mean, go away with you without--?"
"I mean, without Mrs. Armine."
"Leave my wife?"
"Leave Ruby? Desert her after all she's done for me?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Isaacson said nothing.
Nigel looked at Isaacson in silence for what seemed to Isaacson a long time--minutes. Then his face slowly flushed, was suffused with blood up to his forehead. It seemed to swell, as if there was a pressure from within outwards. Then the blood retreated, leaving behind it a sort of dark pallor, and the eyes looked sunken in their sockets.
"You--you dare to think--you dare to--to say--?" he stammered.
"I say that you must come away from Mrs. Armine. Don't ask me to say why."
"You--you liar! You damnable liar!"
He spoke slowly, in a low, husky voice.
"That you hated her, I knew that! She told me that. But that you--that you should dare to--"
His voice broke, and he stopped. He leaned forward in his chair and made a gesture.
"Go!" he said. "Get out! If I--if I were myself, I'd put you out."
But Isaacson did not move. He felt no anger, nothing but a supreme pity for this man who could not see, could not understand the truth of a nature with which he had held commune for so long, and, as he in his blindness believed, in such a perfect intimacy. There was to the Doctor something shocking in such blindness, in such ignorance. But there was something beautiful, too. And to destroy beauty is terrible.