"Can I say nothing to deter you from this expedition?"
"Nothing," replied Craven; "you always promised me a fight some day--do you want to do me out of it now, you selfish devil?" he added with a laugh, to which Saïd did not respond. With an inarticulate grunt he moved toward the door, pausing as he went out to fling over his shoulder: "I'll send you a burnous and the rest of the kit."
"A burnous--what for?"
"What for?" echoed Saïd, coming back into the tent, his eyes wide with astonishment. "Allah! to wear, of course, mon cher. You can't go as you are."
"Why not?"
The Arab rolled his eyes heavenward and waved his hands in protest as he burst out vehemently: "Because they will take you for a Frenchman, a spy, an agent of the Government, and they will finish you off even before they turn their attention to us. They hate us, by the Koran! but they hate a Frenchman worse. You wouldn't have the shadow of a chance."
Craven looked at him curiously for a few moments, and then he smiled. "You're a good fellow, Saïd," he said quietly, taking the cigarette the other offered, "but I'll go as I am, all the same. I'm not used to your picturesque togs, they would only hamper me."
For a little while longer Saïd remained arguing and entreating by turns and then went away suddenly in the middle of a sentence, and for a few minutes Craven stood in the door of the tent watching his retreating figure by the light of the newly risen moon with a smile that softened his face incredibly.
Then he turned back into the tent and once more drew toward him the writing materials.
The difficulty he had before felt had passed away. It seemed suddenly quite easy to write and he wondered why it had appeared so impossible earlier in the evening. Words, phrases, leaped to his mind, sentences seemed to form themselves, and, with rapidly moving pen, he wrote without faltering for the best part of an hour--all he had never dared to say, more almost than he had ever dared to think. He did not spare himself. The tragic history of O Hara San he gave in all its pitifulness without attempting to extenuate or shield himself in any way; he sketched frankly the girl's loneliness and childish ignorance, his own casual and selfish acceptance of the sacrifice she made and the terrible catastrophe that had brought him to abrupt and horrible conviction of himself, and his subsequent determination to end the life he had marred and wasted. He wrote of the coming of John Locke's letter at the moment of his deepest abasement, and of the chance it had seemed to offer; of her own entry into his life and the love for her that almost from the first moment had sprung up within him.