She dropped her hand.
"This boat is my house, Doctor Isaacson, and I must seriously ask you to leave it."
"And I must insist, as a doctor, on seeing your husband."
All pretence was dropped between them. It was a fight.
"This is great impertinence," she said. "I refuse. I've told you my reason."
"I shall stop here till I see your husband," said Isaacson.
And he sat down again very quietly and deliberately on the divan.
"And if you like, I'll tell you my reason," he said.
But she did not ask him what it was. Through the sheet of glass he looked at her, and it was as if he saw a pursued hare suddenly double.
"It's too utterly absurd all this argument about nothing," she said, suddenly smiling, and in her beautiful voice. "Evidently you have been the victim of some ridiculous stories in Cairo or Luxor. Some kind people have been talking, as kind people talked in London. And you've swallowed it all, as you swallowed it all in London. I suppose they said Nigel was dying and that I was neglecting him, or some rubbish of that sort. And so you, as a medical Don Quixote, put your lance in rest and rush to the rescue. But you don't know Nigel if you think he'd thank you for doing it."
In the last sentence her voice, though still preserving its almost lazy beauty, became faintly sinister.
"Nigel knows me as the world does not," she continued, quietly. "And the one who treats me wrongly, without the respect due to me as his wife will find he has lost Nigel as a friend."
Isaacson felt like a man whose enemy has abruptly unmasked a battery, and who faces the muzzles of formidable guns.
"You don't know Nigel."
She said it softly, almost reflectively, and with a little droop of the head she emphasized it.
"You had better do what I ask you to do, Doctor Isaacson. If you wish to do Nigel good, you had better not try to force yourself in against my will in the dead of the night, when I'm tired out and have begged you to go. You had better let me ask Doctor Hartley for a consultation to-morrow, and tell Nigel, and call you in. That's the best plan--if you want to be nice to Nigel."
She sat down again on the divan, at a short distance from him, and close to the door by which Hamza had gone out.
"Nigel and I have talked this all over," she said, with a quiet sweetness.
"Talked this over?" Isaacson said.
With his usual quickness of mind he had realized the exact strength of the strategic position she had so suddenly and unexpectedly taken up. For the moment he wished to gain time. His former complete decision as to what he meant to do was slightly weakened by her presentation of Nigel, the believer. From his knowledge of his friend, he appreciated her judgment of Nigel at its full value. What she had just said was true, and the truth bristled like a bayonet-point in the midst of the lies by which it was surrounded.