"Are--you are going in at once, Ruby?" he said.
"Yes."
"I--will you call from your window presently?"
"Why?"
"When I may come up. After this morning I must talk to you before we sleep."
She looked at him, then looked down, resting her white chin on the warm white fur of the ermine.
"I'll call," she said.
As she went away he looked after her, and thought how almost strangely tall she looked in the long white coat. He paced up and down as he waited, listening for the sound of her voice. After what seemed to him a very long time he heard it at last.
"Nigel! You can come up now--if you like."
He went upstairs at once to her room, and found her sitting in an arm-chair near the window, which led on to the balcony, and which was wide open to the night. She was in a loose and, to him, a mysterious white and flowing garment, with sleeves that fell away from her arms like wings. Her hair was coiled low at the back of her neck.
The room was lit by two candles, which burned upon a small writing-table, and by the wan and delicate moonlight that seemed to creep in stealthily, yet obstinately, from the silently-breathing Egypt in whose warm breast they were. He stood for a moment; then he sat down on a little sofa, not close to her, but near her.
"Ruby," he said.
"Well, Nigel?"
"This has been the first unhappy day for me since we've been married."
"Unhappy!"
"Yes, because of the cloud between us."
She said nothing, and he resumed: "It's made me know something, though, Ruby; it's made me know how much I care--for you."
He leaned forward, and, as he did so, her mind went to Baroudi, and she remembered exactly the look of his shoulders and of his throat when he was leaning towards her.
"I don't think I really knew it before. I'm sure I didn't know it. What made me understand it was the way I felt when I found I had hurt you, had done you a wrong for a moment. Ruby, my own feeling has punished me so much that I don't think you can want to punish me any more."
"I punish you!" she said. "But what wrong have you done me? And how could I punish you?"
"I did you a wrong this morning by thinking for a moment--" He stopped; he found he could not put it quite clearly into words. "Over Harwich and the boys," he concluded.
"Oh, that! That didn't matter!" she said.
She spoke coldly, but she was feeling more excited, more emotional, than she had felt for a very long time, than she had known that she could feel.