ristian name for the first time.

"I thought I would give you and your husband a surprise. I hope you
forgive me?"

After what seemed to him an immensely long time she answered:

"What is there to forgive? Everybody comes to the Nile. One is never
astonished to see any one turn up."

Her voice this time was no longer ugly. It began to have some of the
warm and the lazy charm that he had found in it when he met her in
London. But the charm sounded deliberate, as if it was thrust into the
voice by a strong effort of her will.

"I use the word 'see,'" she added. "But really here one can't see any
one or anything properly. Let us go out."

And she passed out of the sanctuary into the dim but less dark hall that
lay beyond. Isaacson followed her.

In the slightly stronger light he looked at her swiftly. Already she was
putting up her hands to a big white veil, which she had pushed up over
her large white hat. Before it fell, obscuring, though not concealing
her, he had seen that her face was not made up and that it was deadly
pale. But that pallor might be natural. Always in London he had seen her
made up, and always made up white. Possibly her face, when unpowdered,
unpainted, was white, too.

In the hall she stood still once more.

"You are an extraordinary person, Doctor Isaacson," she said. "Do you
know it? I don't think any one else would come out suddenly like this to
a place where he had a friend, without letting the friend know. Really,
if it were not you, one might think it quite oddly surreptitious."

She finished with a little laugh.

"I think Nigel will be very much surprised," she added.

"I hope you don't mean unpleasantly surprised? As I told you, I
intended--"

"Oh, yes, I know all that," she interrupted. "But surely, it
seems--well, almost a little bit unfriendly to be on the Nile and never
to let him know. And I suppose--how long have you been in Egypt?"

"Oh, a very short time. You must not think I've delayed. On the
contrary--"

"If you had delayed, it would have been quite reasonable. You have never
seen Egypt before, have you?"

"Never."

"How long were you at Luxor?"

"One night, on the boat opposite to Luxor."

"Then what did you see?"

"Nothing at all."

She put up one hand and pulled gently at her veil.

"I thought I would do all the sight-seeing as I came down the river."

"Most people do it coming up. And I find you in a temple."

"It is the first I have entered. I