She looked at him thoughtfully. There were still depths that she had not fathomed in his strange character. Would she ever arrive at even a distant understanding of his complex nature? There was a misty yearning in her eyes as they followed his tall figure up and down the tent. His feet made no sound on the thick rugs, and he moved with the long, graceful stride that always reminded her of the walk of a wild animal. Her new-found love longed for expression as she watched him. If she could only tell him! If she had only the right to go to him and in his arms to kiss away the cruel lines from his mouth! But she had not. She must wait until she was called, until he should choose to notice the woman whom he had taken for his pleasure, until the baser part of him had need of her again. He was an Arab, and to him a woman was a slave, and as a slave she must give everything and ask for nothing.
And when he did turn to her again the joy she would feel in his embrace would be an agony for the love that was not there. His careless kisses would scorch her and the strength of his arms would be a mockery. But would he ever turn to her again? If anything happened to Gaston—if what he had suggested became a fact and the servant fell a victim to the blood feud between the two tribes? She knew he would be terribly avenged, and what would her part be? She wondered dully if he would kill her, and how. If the long, brown fingers with their steely strength would choke the life out of her. Her hands went up to her throat mechanically. He stopped near her to light a fresh cigarette, and she was trying to summon up courage to speak to him of Gaston when the covering of the doorway was flung open and Gaston himself stood in the entrance.
"Monseigneur—" he stammered, and with his two hands outstretched, palm uppermost, he made an appealing gesture.
The Sheik's hand shot out and gripped the man's shoulder. "Gaston! Enfin, mon ami!" he said slowly, but there was a ring in his low voice that Diana had never heard before.
For a moment the two men stared at each other, and then Ahmed Ben Hassan gave a little laugh of great relief. "Praise be to Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate," he murmured.
"To his name praise!" rejoined Gaston softly, then his eyes roved around the tent towards Diana, and there was no resentment in them, but only anxiety.
"Madame is–" he hesitated, but the Sheik cut him short.
"Madame is quite safe," he said dryly, and pushed him gently towards the door with a few words in rapid Arabic. He stood some time after Gaston had gone to his own quarters looking out into the night, and when he came in, lingered unusually over closing the flap. Diana stood hesitating. She was worn out and her long riding-boots felt like lead. She was afraid to go and afraid to stay. He seemed purposely ignoring her. The relief of Gaston's return was enormous, but she had still to reckon with him for her attempted flight. That he said no word about it at the moment meant nothing; she knew him too well for that. And there was Silver Star, the finest of all his magnificent horses—she had yet to pay for his death. The strain that she had gone through since the morning was tremendous, she could not bear much more. His silence aggravated her breaking nerves until she felt that her nerves would go. He had moved over to the writing-table and was tearing the wrapping off a box of cartridges preparatory to refilling the magazine of his revolver. The little operation seemed to take centuries. She started at each separate click. She gripped her hands and passed her tongue over her dry lips. If he would not speak she must, she could endure it no longer.
"I am sorry about Silver Star," she faltered, and even to herself her voice sounded hoarse and strange. He did not answer, but only shrugged his shoulders as he dropped the last cartridge into its place.
The gesture and his uncompromising attitude exasperated her. "You had better have shot me," she said bitterly.
"Perhaps. You would have been easier replaced. There are plenty of women, but Silver Star was almost unique," he retorted quickly, and she winced at the cold brutality of his tone.
A little sad smile curved her lips. "Yet you shot your horse to get me back," she said in a barely audible voice.
He flung round with an oath. "You little fool! Do you know so little of me yet? Do you think that I will let anything stand between me and what I want? Do you think that by running away from me you will make me want you less? By Allah! I would have found you if you had got as far as France. What I have I keep, until I tire of it—and I have not tired of you yet." He jerked her to him, staring down at her passionately, and for a moment his face was the face of a devil. "How shall I punish you?" He felt the shudder he expected go through her and laughed as she shrank in his arms and hid her face. He forced her head up with merciless fingers. "What do you hate most?—my kisses?" and with another mocking laugh he crushed his mouth to hers in a long suffocating embrace.
Then he let her go suddenly, and, blind and dizzy, she reeled from him and staggered. He caught her as she swayed and swept her into his arms. Her head fell back against his shoulder and his face changed at the sight of her quivering features. He carried her into the adjoining room and laid her on the couch, his hands lingering as he drew them from her. For a moment he stood looking down with smouldering eyes on the slight, boyish figure lying on the bed, the ferocity dying out of his face. "Take care you do not wake the devil in me again, ma belle," he said sombrely.
Alone Diana turned her face into the pillows with a moan of anguish. Back in the desert a few hours ago, under the shining stars, when the truth had first come to her, she had thought that she was happy, but she knew now that without his love she would never be happy. She had tasted the bitterness of his loveless kisses and she knew that a worse bitterness was to come, and she writhed at the thought of what her life with him would be.
"I love him! I love him! And I want his love more than anything in Heaven and earth."
CHAPTER VI
Diana was sitting on the divan in the living-room of the tent lingering over her petit dejeuner, a cup of coffee poised in one hand and her bright head bent over a magazine on her knee. It was a French periodical of fairly recent date, left a few days before by a Dutchman who was touring through the desert, and who had asked a night's hospitality. Diana had not seen him, and it was not until the traveller had been served with dinner in his own tent that the Sheik had sent the usual flowery message conveying what, though wrapped in honeyed words, amounted practically to a command that he should come to drink coffee and let himself be seen. Only native servants had been in attendance, and it was an Arab untinged by any Western influence who had received him, talking only Arabic, which the Dutchman spoke fluently, and placing at his disposal himself, his servants and all his belongings with the perfunctory Oriental insincerity which the traveller knew meant nothing and accepted at its own value, returning to the usual set phrases the customary answers that were expected of him. Once or twice as they talked a woman's subdued voice had reached the Dutchman's ears from behind the thick curtains, but he knew too much to let any expression betray him, and he smiled grimly to himself at the thought of the change that an indiscreet question would bring to the stern face of his grave and impassive host. He was an elderly man with a tender heart, and he wondered speculatively what the girl in the next room would have to pay for her own indiscretion in allowing her voice to be heard. He left the next morning early without seeing the Sheik again, escorted for some little distance by Yusef and a few men.