"Yes, but I shan't be working so hard as you do."
"How long shall we be in the Fayyūm?" she asked, carelessly. "How long were you in it last year?"
She said nothing. He struck a match and lit a cigar.
"But of course now it's different," he said. "If you like it, we can stay on, and if you don't we can go back presently to the villa."
"I ought to be here, so I hope you will like it, Ruby."
"But this winter I mean to live for you, and to try to make you happy. We'll just see how you like being here. Do you think you will like it? Do you feel, as I do, the joy of being in such perfect freedom?"
"It's a tremendous change for you, but is it a happy change?" he asked.
"It's wonderful here," she answered; "but it's so strange that I shall have to get accustomed to it."
As she spoke, she was longing, till her soul seemed to ache, to take the early morning train to Cairo. Accustomed for years to have all her caprices obeyed, all her whims indulged by men, she did not know how she was going to endure this situation, which a passionate love alone could have made tolerable. And the man by her side had that passionate love which made the dreary Fayyûm his Heaven. She could almost have struck him because he was so happy.
"There's one thing I must say I should love to do before we go away from Egypt," she said, slowly.
She seemed to be led or even forced to say it.
"I should love to go up the Nile on a dahabeeyah."
"Then you shall. When we leave here and pass through Cairo, I'll pick out a boat, and we'll send it up to Luxor, go on board there, and then sail for Assouan. But you mustn't think we shall get a _Loulia_."
"Millionaires like Baroudi don't hire out their boats," he added. "And if they did, I couldn't pay their price while Etchingham's so badly let."
Her forehead was wrinkled by a frown. She hated to hear a man who loved her speak of his poverty. It had become a habit of her mind to think that no man had a right to love her unless he could give her exactly what she wanted.
They stepped out on to the waste ground. His hand was still on her arm, and he led her down to the stream. The young moon was already setting. The starry sky was flecked here and there with gossamer veils of cloud. A heavy dew was falling upon the dense growths of the oasis, and in the distance of the palm-grove, where gleamed the lamp from the tent of the German lady and the young Arab, a faint and pearly mist was rising. Nigel drew in his breath, then let it out. It went in vapour from his lips.