She saw her opportunity.
"Don't you know yet that women find most of their happiness in pleasing the men they love?" she said.
"But I want to please you."
"So you shall presently."
"How?"
"By taking me up the Nile."
She had sown in his mind the belief that she was living for him unselfishly. He resolved to pay her with a sterling coin of unselfishness. Never mind the work! In this first year he must think always first of her, must dedicate himself to her. And in making her life to flower was he not reclaiming the desert?
"I will take you up the Nile," he said. "Always be frank with me, Ruby. If—if things that suit me don't suit you, tell me so straight out. I think the one thing that binds two people together with hoops of steel is absolute sincerity. Even if it hurts, it's a saviour."
"Yes, but I am absolutely sincere when I say that I love to live in your life."
She could afford to say that now, and despite the increasing desolation around them her heart leaped at a prospect of release, for she knew how his mind was working, and she heard the murmur of Nile water round the prow of a dahabeeyah.