Oh, what a brute I am!"

Tears came into his eyes.

"I martyrize her, I know I do," he said to Isaacson; "but I don't
believe it's my fault. I do feel so awfully ill!"

His head drooped. Isaacson felt his pulse. Nigel gazed down at the
divan, staring with eyes that had become filmy. Mrs. Armine looked at
Isaacson, and he, with a doctor's memory that was combined with the
memory of a man who had formerly been conquered, compared this poor
pulse that fluttered beneath his sensitive fingers with another pulse
which once he had felt beating strongly--a pulse which had made him
understand the defiance of a life.

"You had better get to bed," he said to Nigel, letting his wrist go,
and watching it sharply as it dropped to the cushions. "I shall give you
something to make you sleep."

Mrs. Armine opened her lips, but this time he sent her a look which
caused her to shut them.

"I don't know whether you are in the habit of taking anything--whether
you are given anything at night. If so, to-night it is to be
discontinued. You are to touch nothing except what I am going to give
you. Directly you are in bed I'll come."

"But--" Nigel began, "we haven't--"

"Had any talk. I know. There'll be plenty of time for that. But Mrs.
Armine is quite right. It is late, and you must go at once to bed."

Nigel made a movement to get up. Mrs. Armine quickly and efficiently
helped him, put her arm around him, supported his arm, led him away into
the narrow corridor from which the bedrooms opened. They disappeared
through a little doorway on the left.

Then Isaacson sat down and waited, looking at the leaping spray and at
the gilded trifle that was its captive. Presently his eyes travelled
away from that, and examined the room and everything in it. That man
whom he had seen driving the Russian horses, and squatting on the floor
of the hashish cafe, might well be at home here. And he himself--could
not he be at home here, with these marvellous prayer-rugs and
embroideries, into which was surely woven something of the deep and
eternal enigma of the East? But his friend and--that woman?

Actively, now, he hated Mrs. Armine. He was a man who could hate well.
But he was not going to allow his hatred to run away with him. Once, in
a silent contest between them, he had been worsted by her. In this
second contest he now declined to be worsted. One fall was enough for
this man who was not accustomed to be overthrown. If his temper and his
p