n't--"

"Just as you like! Either I stay here and take charge of this case, or I
go back to the boat at Edfou and to-morrow I put myself into
communication with the proper authorities."

She got up again slowly.

"Well, if you really believe you can pull Nigel round quickly!" she
said.

She moved to the door.

"I'll see what he says!" she murmured.

Then she opened the door and went out.

That night Isaacson sent Hassan back to the _Fatma_ to fetch some
necessary luggage. For Mrs. Armine succeeded in persuading her husband
to submit to a doctor's visit the next morning.

Isaacson had not been worsted. But as he went into one of the smart
little cabins to get some sleep if possible, he felt terribly, almost
unbearably, depressed.

For what was--what must be--the meaning of this victory?

XL

Isaacson had asked himself at night the meaning of his victory. When the
morning dawned, when once more he had to go to his work, the work which
was his life, although sometimes he was inclined to decry it secretly in
moments of fatigue, he asked no further questions. His business was
plain before him, and it was business into which he could put his heart.
Although he was not an insensitive man, he was a man of generous nature.
He pushed away with an almost careless energy those small annoyances,
those little injuries of life, which more petty people make much of and
cannot easily forgive. The querulous man who was ready, out of his
bodily weakness and his mis-directed love, to make little of his
friendship, even to thrust away his proffered help, he disregarded as
man, regarded as so much nearly destroyed material which he had to
repair, to bring back to its former flawlessness. He knew the real
nature, the real soul of the man; he understood why they were warped,
and he put himself aside, put his pride into his pocket, which he
considered the proper place for it at that moment. But though he had
gained his point by a daring half-avowal of what his intuition had
whispered to him, he presently realized that if he were to win through
with Nigel into the sunshine, he must act with determination; perhaps,
too, with a cunning which the Eastern drops in his blood made not so
unnatural to him as it might have been to most men as honest living as
he was.

Mrs. Armine had been dominated for the moment. She had obeyed. She had
done the thing she hated to do. But she was not the woman to run
straight on any path that l