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 couldn't pass Edfou."
"Why?"
"Perhaps because I felt that I should meet you in it."
He spoke now with the lightness of an agreeable man of the world paying a compliment to a pretty woman.
"My good angel perhaps guided me into the Holy of Holies because you were--shall I say dreaming in it?"
She moved and walked on.
"Were you long in Cairo?" she said.
"One night."
She stopped again.
"What an extraordinary rush!" she said.
"Yes, I've come along quickly."
"I suppose you've only a very limited time to do it all in? You're only taking a week or two?"
She turned her head towards him, and it seemed to him that her eyes were glittering with a strange excitement, a strange eagerness under her veil.