Bella Donna Part 71

He sipped, and she did likewise.

"It's perfect, simply perfect. But what has been put into it to give it this peculiar, delicious flavour, Ruby?"

"Ah, that's my secret."

She sipped from her little cup.

"It is extraordinarily good," she said.

She pointed to the small paper packets, which Hamza had not yet carried off.

"The preparation is almost like some sacred rite," she said. "We put in a little something from this packet, and a little something from that.

And we smoke the cups with one of those burning sticks of mastic. And then, at the very end, when the coffee is frothing and creaming, we dust it with sugar. This is the result."

"Simply perfect."

He put his cup down empty.

"Look at that light!" he said, pointing over the rail to the yellow water which they were leaving behind them. "Have you finished?"

"Quite."

"Then let's go on deck--coffee-maker."

They were quite alone. He put his arm around her as she stood up.

"Everything you give me seems to me different from other things," he said--"different, and so much better."

"Your imagination is kind to me--too kind. You are foolish about me."

"Am I?"

He looked into her eyes, and his kind and enthusiastic eyes became almost piercing for an instant.

"And you, Ruby?"

"I?"

"Could you ever be foolish about me?"

For a moment his joy seemed to be clouded by a faint and creeping doubt, as if he were mentally comparing her condition of heart with his, and as if the comparison were beginning--only just beginning--dimly to distress him. She knew just how he was feeling, and she leaned against him, making her body feel weak.

"I don't want to," she said.

"Why not?"

Already the cloud was evaporating.

"I don't want to suffer. I want to be happy now in the short time I have left for happiness."

"Why do you say 'the short time'?"

"I'm not young any more. And I've suffered enough in my life."

"But through me! How could you suffer? Don't you trust me completely even yet?"

"It isn't that. But--it's dangerous for a woman to be foolish about any man. It's a folly to care too much."

She spoke with a sincerity there was no mistaking, for she was thinking about Baroudi.

"Only sometimes. Only when one cares for the weak, or the insincere.

We--needn't count the cost, and hesitate."

She let him close her lips, which were opening for a reply, and while he kissed her she listened to the voices of the shaduf men ever calling on the banks of the river.

When they were on the upper deck those voices seemed to her louder. That evening it was a sunset of sheer gold. The cloudless sky--so it seemed--would brook no other colour; the hills would receive no gift that was not a gift of gold. A pageant of gold that was almost barbaric was offered to Mrs. Armine. Out of the gold the voices cried from banks that were turning black. Always, in Egypt, the gold turns the barques on the Nile, its banks, the palm-trees that sometimes crown them, the houses of the native villages, black. And so it was that evening, but Nigel only saw and thought of the gold.

"At last we are sailing into the gold," he said. "This makes me think of a picture that I love."

"What picture?"

"A picture by Watts, called 'Progress.' In it there is a wonderful glow.

I remember I spoke of it to Meyer Isaacson on the evening when I introduced him to you."

She had been leaning over the rail on the starboard side of the boat.

Now she lifted her arms, stood straight up, then sat down in a beehive chair, and leaned back against the basket-work, which creaked as if protesting.

"To Meyer Isaacson!" she said. "What did you say about it?"

He turned, set his back against the rail, and looked at her in her hooded shelter.

"We spoke of progress. The picture's an allegory, of course, an allegory of the spiritual progress of the world, and of each one of us.

I remember telling Isaacson how firmly I believed in the triumph of good in the world and the individual."

"And what did he say?"

"Isaacson? I don't know that he quite took my view."

"He's a tiny bit of a suspicious man, I think."

"Perhaps he wants more solid proof--proof you could point to and say, 'Look there! I rely on that!' than I should."

"He's ever so much more _terre a terre_ than you are."

"Oh, Ruby, I don't know that!"

"Yes, he is. He's a delightfully clever and a very interesting man, but, though he mayn't think it he's _terre a terre_. He sees with extraordinary clearness, but only a very little way, and he would never believe anything important existed beyond the range of his vision. You are not like that!"