"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."