"Those boatmen are close to the garden!" he said.
Mrs. Armine wrapped her cloak suddenly round her.
"Would you like to go down to the river and see them?" he added.
"Yes, let us go. I must see them," she said.
She got up from her chair with a quick but graceful movement that was full of fiery impetus, and her eyes were shining almost fiercely, as if they gave a reply to the fierce voices of the boatmen.
Nigel drew her arm through his, and they went down the little sandy path past the motionless orange-trees till they came to the bank of the Nile. Ibrahim was standing there, peeping out whimsically from his fringed and tasselled wrappings, and smoking a cigarette.
"Where are the boatmen, Ibrahim?" said Nigel.
"Here they come, my gentleman!"
Upon the wide and moving darkness of the river, a great highway of the night leading to far-off African lands, hugging the shore by a tufted darkness of trees, there came a felucca that gleamed with lanterns. The oars sounded in the water, mingling with the voices of the men, whose vague, uncertain forms, some crouched, some standing up, some leaning over the river, that was dyed with streaks of light into which the shining drops fell back from the lifted blades, were half revealed to the watchers above them in the garden.
"Here come the Noobian peoples!"
"I wonder what they are doing here," said Nigel, "and why they come up the river to-night. Whose people can they be?"
Ibrahim opened his lips to explain, but Mrs. Armine looked at him, and he shut them without a word.
"Hush!" she whispered. "I want to listen."
This was like a serenade of the East designed to give her a welcome to Egypt, like the voice of this great, black Africa speaking to her alone out of the night, speaking with a fierce insistence, daring her not to listen to it, not to accept its barbaric summons. A sort of animal romance was stirred within her, and she began to feel strongly excited. She heard no longer the name of Allah, or, if she heard it, she connected it no longer with the Christian's conception of a God, with Nigel's conception of a God, but perhaps with strange idols in dusky temples where are mingled crimes and worship. Her imagination suddenly rose up, gathered its energies, and ran wild.
The boat stayed opposite the garden.
"It must be meant for me, it is meant for me!" she thought.
At that moment she knew quite certainly that this boat had come to the garden because she lived in the garden, that it paused so that she might be sure that the music was directed to her, was meant for no one but her. It was not for her and Nigel. Nigel had nothing to do with it. He did not understand its meaning.