He smiled.
"I wasn't worrying. I was looking forward."
"Why? We are here to-night, Nigel, to live as if we had only to-night to live. You talk of Sennoures. But who knows whether we shall ever see Sennoures, ever hear the Egyptian Pan by the water? I don't. You don't. But we do know we are here to-night by the Nile."
With all her force, but secretly, she was trying to destroy in him the spiritual aspiration which was essential in his nature, through which she had won him as her husband, but which now could only irritate and confuse her, and stand in the way of her desires, keeping the path against them.
"Yes," he said, drawing in his breath. "We are here to-night by the Nile, and we hear the boatmen singing."
The distant singers had been silent for some minutes; now their voices were heard again, and sounded nearer to the garden, as if they were on some vessel that was drifting down the river under the brilliant stars. So much nearer was the music that Mrs. Armine could hear a word cried out by a solo voice, "Al-lah! Al-lah! Al-lah!" The voice was accompanied by a deep and monotonous murmur. The singer was beating a daraboukkeh held loosely between his knees. The chorus of nasal voices joined in with the rough and artless vehemence which had in it something that was sad, and something that, though pitiless, seemed at moments to thrill with yearning, like the cruelty of the world, which is mingled with the eternal longing for the healing of its wounds.
"We hear the boatmen singing," he repeated, "about Allah, and always Allah, Allah, the God of the Nile, and of us two on the Nile."
"Sh--sh! There's that dog again! I do wish--"
She had begun to speak with an abrupt and almost fierce nervous irritation, but she recovered herself immediately.
"Couldn't the gardener keep him out?" she said, quietly.
"Perhaps he belongs to the gardener. I'll go and see. I won't be a minute."
He sprang up and followed the dog, which crept away into the garden, looking around with its desolate, yellow eyes to see if danger were near it.
Allah--Allah--Allah in the night!
Mrs. Armine did not know that this song of the boatmen of Nubia was presently, in later days she did not dream of, to become almost an integral part of her existence on the Nile; but although she did not know this, she listened to it with an attention that was strained and almost painful.
"Al-lah--Al-lah--"
"And probably there is no God," she thought. "How can there be? I am sure there is none."