The Sheik

She looked away across the desert beyond the last palms of the oasis. A

haze hung round about, shimmering in the heat and blurring the outline

of the distant hills. A tiny breeze brought the acrid smell of camels

closer to her, and the creaking whine of the tackling over the well

sounded not very far away. Diana gave a little sigh. It had all grown

so familiar. She seemed to have lived no other life beside this nomad

existence. The years that had gone before faded into a kind of dim

remembrance, the time when she had travelled ceaselessly round the

world with her brother seemed very remote. She had existed then,

filling her life with sport, unconscious of the something that was

lacking in her nature, and now she was alive at last, and the heart

whose existence she had doubted was burning and throbbing with a

passion that was consuming her. Her eyes swept lingeringly around the

camp with a very tender light in them. Everything she saw was connected

with and bound up in the man who was lord of it all. She was very proud

of him, proud of his magnificent physical abilities, proud of his hold

over his wild turbulent followers, proud with the pride of primeval

woman in the dominant man ruling his fellow-men by force and fear.

The old Arab had finished his prayers and rose leisurely from his

knees, salaaming with a broad smile. All the tribesmen smiled on her,

and would go out of their way to win a nod of recognition from her. She

faltered a few words in stumbling Arabic in reply to his long, flowery

speech, and with a little laugh beat a hasty retreat into the tent.

She paused beside the Vicomte. "Is it another novel?" she asked shyly,

indicating the steadily increasing pile of manuscript.

He turned on his chair, resting his arms on the rail, twirling a

fountain pen between his fingers, and smiled at her as she curled up on

the divan with Kopec, who had followed her into the tent. "No, Madame,

Something more serious this time. It is a history of this very curious

tribe of Ahmed's. They are different in so many ways from ordinary

Arabs. They have been a race apart for generations. They have beliefs

and customs peculiarly their own. You may, for instance, have noticed

the singular absence among them of the strict religious practices that

hold among other Mohammedans. Ahmed Ben Hassan's tribe worship first

and foremost their Sheik, then the famous horses for which they are

renowned, and then and then only--Allah."