"After all, you are much my senior," he said, as they were getting in, "besides being an intimate friend of the patient. I don't think it would seem unnatural to any one."
"The most natural thing in the world!" said Isaacson, calmly. "Yes, Hassan, you can come with us. Come in the other boat. I may want you to do something for me later on."
The two doctors did not talk much as they were rowed towards the Loulia. Both were preoccupied. As they drew near to her, however, Doctor Hartley began to fidget. His bodily restlessness betrayed his mental uneasiness.
"I do hope she'll be reasonable," he said at length.
"I think she will."
"What makes you?"
"She's a decidedly clever woman."
"Clever—oh, yes, she is. She was very well known, wasn't she, once—in a certain way?"
"As a beauty—yes."
Isaacson's tone of voice was scarcely encouraging, and the other relapsed into silence and continued to fidget. But when they were close to the Loulia, almost under the blue light that shone at her mast-head, he said, in a low and secretive voice: