er,
and the throbbing of the _daraboukkeh_ sounded loudly in their ears.
Nigel lifted his head without kissing her.

"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