"But that's not all," he said, still holding her hand closely. "I asked him who on board the Loulia could have wished for my death."
"That's--that's just what I was thinking," she managed to say.
"And then he said a dreadful thing."
"What?"
"He said that you had done it."
She took her hand away from his sharply, and sat back in her chair. He did not move. They sat there looking at each other. And their silence was disturbed by the perpetual singing on the Loulia.
And so it had been said!
Isaacson had discovered the exact truth, and had told it to Nigel!
She felt a reckless relief. As she sat there, she seemed to be staring not at Nigel but at herself. And as she stared at herself, she marvelled.
"He said that you had done it, or, if not that, had known that it was being done, had meant it to be done."
She remained silent and motionless. And now, with her thought of the truth revealed to her husband was linked another thought of the girl with Baroudi on board of the Loulia.
"Then I told him to go, or I would put him out."
"Ah!" she said.
There was a sort of bitter astonishment in the exclamation, and now in the eyes regarding him Nigel seemed to discern wonder.
"And he went, after he had told me some--some other things."
Something in her, in her face, or her manner, or her deadly silence, broken only by that seemingly almost sarcastic cry--began evidently to affect her husband.
"Some other things," he repeated.
"What were they?"
"He said he had come out from England because he had suspected something was wrong. He told me that he met you by chance in the temple of Edfou, that you seemed terrified at seeing him, that it was not you who asked him to come to the Loulia to see me, but that, on the contrary, he asked to come and you refused to let him. He said you even sent him a letter telling him not to come. He gave me that letter. Here it is. I have not read it."
He put his hand into his coat and drew out the letter, and with it the gilded box which Baroudi had given to her in the orange garden.
"There is the letter."
He laid it on the table.
"I found this in your room when I went for the cloak," he said, "full of Eastern things for the face."
His eyes were a question.
"I bought it in Cairo yesterday."
He laid it down.
"In spite of that letter--Isaacson said--he did come that night, and he overheard us talking on the balcony, and heard me say how I wished he were in Egypt."