She leaned forward a little, as if she wanted to see the sunset better, but soon she looked at him.
"Oh, I let him understand just how it is between you and me. And I told him about the dahabeeyah, what a marvel it is, and about Baroudi, and how Ibrahim put Baroudi up to the idea of letting it to us."
"I see."
"How these chairs creak!" he said. "Yours is making a regular row."
She got up.
"You aren't going down again?"
"No. Let us walk about."
"All right."
He joined her and they began slowly to pace up and down, while the gold grew fainter in the sky, fainter upon the river. She kept silence, and perhaps communicated her wish for silence to him, for he did not speak until the sunset had faded away, and the world of water, green flats, desert, and arid hills grew pale in the pause before the afterglow. Then at last he said:
"What is it, Ruby? What are you thinking about so seriously?"