She wondered numbly what would become of her. It did not seem to matter much. Nothing mattered now that he did not want her any more. The old life was far away, in another world. She could never go back to it. She did not care. It was nothing to her. It was only here in the desert, in Ahmed Ben Hassan's arms, that she had become alive, that she had learned what life really meant, that she had waked both to happiness and sorrow.
The future stretched out blank and menacing before her, but she turned from it with a great sob of despair. It was on him that her thoughts were fixed. How would life be endurable without him? Dully she wondered why she did not hate him for having done to her what he had done, for having made her what she was. But nothing that he could do could kill the love now that he had inspired. And she would never regret. She would always have the memory of the fleeting happiness that had been hers—in after years that memory would be all that she would have to live for. Even in her heart she did not reproach him, there was no bitterness in her misery. She had always known that it would come, though she had fenced with it, shutting it out of her mind resolutely. He had never led her to expect anything else. There was no link to bring them closer together, no bond between them. If she could have had the promise of a child. Alone though she was the sensitive colour flamed into her cheeks, and she hid her face in the pillows with a quivering sob. A child that would be his and hers, a child—a boy with the same passionate dark eyes, the same crisp brown hair, the same graceful body, who would grow up as tall and strong, as brave and fearless as his father. Surely he must love her then. Surely the memory of his own mother's tragic history would make him merciful to the mother of his son. But she had no hope of that mercy. She lay shaking with passionate yearning and the storm of bitter tears that swept over her, hungry for the clasp of his arms, faint with longing. The pent-up misery of weeks that she had crushed down surged over. There was nobody to hear the agonising sobs that shook her from head to foot. She could relax the control that she had put upon herself and which had seemed to be slowly turning her to stone. She could give way to the emotion that, suppressed, had welled up choking in her throat and gripped her forehead like red-hot bands eating into her brain. Tears were not easy to her. She had not wept since that first night when, with the fear of worse than death, she had grovelled at his feet, moaning for mercy. She had not wept during the terrible hours she was in the power of Ibraheim Omair, nor during the days that Raoul de Saint Hubert had fought for his friend's life. But to-night the tears that all her life she had despised would not be denied. Tortured with conflicting emotions, unsatisfied love, fear and uncertainty, utterly unnerved, she gave herself up at last to the feelings she could no longer restrain. Prone on the wide bed, her face buried in the pillows, her hands clutching convulsively at the silken coverings, she wept until she had no more tears, until the anguished, sobs died away into silence and she lay quiet, exhausted.
She wrestled with herself. The weakness that she had given way to must be conquered. She knew that, without any possibility of doubt, his coming would seal her fate—whatever it was to be. She must wait until then. A long, shuddering sigh ran through her. "Ahmed! Ahmed Ben Hassan," she murmured slowly, lingering with wistful tenderness on the words. She pressed her face closer into the cushions, clasping her hands over her head, and for a long time lay very still. The heat was intense and every moment the tent seemed to grow more airless. The room was stifling, and, with a little groan, Diana sat up, pushing the heavy hair oft her damp forehead, and covered her flushed face with her hands. A cicada began its shrill note close by, chirping with maddening persistency. Quite suddenly her mind was filled with thoughts of her own people, the old home in England, the family for whose honour her ancestors had been so proudly jealous. Even Aubrey, lazy and self-indulgent as he was, prized the family honour as he prized nothing else on earth; and now she, proud Diana Mayo, who had the history of her race at her fingers' ends, who had gloried in the long line of upright men and chaste women, had no thankfulness in her heart that in her degradation she had been spared a crowning shame. Beside her love everything dwindled into nothingness. He was her life, he filled her horizon. Honour itself was lost in the absorbing passion of her love. He had stripped it from her and she was content that it should lie at his feet. He had made her nothing, she was his toy, his plaything, waiting to be thrown aside. She shuddered again and looked around the tent that she had shared with him with a bitter smile and sad, hunted eyes…. After her—who? The cruel thought persisted. She was torn with a mad, primitive jealousy, a longing to kill the unknown woman who would inevitably succeed her, a desire that grew until a horror of her own feelings seized her, and she shrank down, clasping her hands over her ears to shut out the insidious voice that seemed actually whispering beside her. The Persian hound in the next room had whined uneasily from time to time, and now he pushed his way past the curtain and stalked across the thick rugs. He nuzzled his shaggy head against her knee, whimpering unhappily, looking up into her face. And when she noticed him he reared up and flung his long body across her lap, thrusting his wet nose into her face. She caught his head in her hands and rubbed her cheek against his rough hair, crooning over him softly. Even the dog was comfort in her loneliness, and they both waited for their master.
She pushed him down at length, and with her hand on his collar went into the other room. A solitary lamp burned dimly. She crossed to the doorway and pulled aside the flap, and a small, white-clad figure rose up before her.
"Is that you, Gaston?" she asked involuntarily, though she knew that the question was unnecessary, for he always slept across the entrance to the tent when the Sheik was away.
"A votre service, Madame."
For a few minutes she did not speak, and Gaston stood silent beside her. She might have remembered that he was there. He never stirred far beyond the sound of her voice whenever she was alone in the camp. He was always waiting, unobtrusive, quick to carry out her requests, even to anticipate them. With him standing beside her she thought of the time when they had fought side by side—all difference in rank eclipsed in their common danger. The servant had been merged into the man, and a man who had the courage to do what he had attempted when he had faced her at what had seemed the last moment with his revolver clenched in a hand that had not shaken, a man at whose side and by whose hand she would have been proud to die. They were men, these desert dwellers, master and servants alike; men who endured, men who did things, inured to hardships, imbued with magnificent courage, splendid healthy animals. There was nothing effete or decadent about the men with whom Ahmed Ben Hassan surrounded himself.
Diana had always liked Gaston; she had been touched by his unvarying respectful attitude that had never by a single word or look conveyed the impression that he was aware of her real position in his master's camp. He treated her as if she were indeed what from the bottom of her heart she wished she was. He was solicitous without being officious, familiar with no trace of impertinence, He was Diana's first experience of a class of servant that still lingers in France, a survival of pre-Revolution days, who identify themselves entirely with the family they serve, and in Gaston's case this interest in his master had been strengthened by experiences shared and dangers faced which had bound them together with a tie that could never be broken and had raised their relations on to a higher plane than that of mere master and man. Those relations had at first been a source of perpetual wonder to Diana, brought up in the rigid atmosphere of her brother's establishment, where Aubrey's egoism gave no opportunity for anything but conventional service, and in their wanderings, where personal servants had to be often changed. Even Stephens was, in Aubrey's eyes, a mere machine.