The Sheik

The risen moon was full, and its cold, brilliant light filled the

garden with strong black shadows. She watched some that seemed even to

move, as if the garden were alive with creeping, hurrying figures, and

amused herself tracking them until she traced them to the palm tree or

cactus bush that caused them. One in particular gave her a long hunt

till she finally ran it to its lair, and it proved to be the shadow of

a grotesque lead statue half hidden by a flowering shrub. Forgetting

the hour and the open windows all around her, she burst into a rippling

peal of laughter, which was interrupted by the appearance of a figure,

imperfectly seen through the lattice-work which divided her balcony

from the next one, and the sound of an irritable voice.

"For Heaven's sake, Diana, let other people sleep if you can't."

"Which, being interpreted, is let Sir Aubrey Mayo sleep," she retorted,

with a chuckle. "My dear boy, sleep if you want to, but I don't know

how you can on a night like this. Did you ever see such a gorgeous

moon?"

"Oh, damn the moon!"

"Oh, very well. Don't get cross about it. Go back to bed and put your

head under the clothes, and then you won't see it. But I'm going to sit

here."

"Diana, don't be an idiot! You'll go to sleep and fall into the garden

and break your neck."

"Tant pis pour moi. Tant mieux pour toi," she said flippantly.

"I have left you all that I have in the world, dear brother. Could

devotion go further?"

She paid no heed to his exclamation of annoyance, and looked back into

the garden. It was a wonderful night, silent except for the cicadas'

monotonous chirping, mysterious with the inexplicable mystery that

hangs always in the Oriental night. The smells of the East rose up all

around her; here, as at home, they seemed more perceptible by night

than by day. Often at home she had stood on the little stone balcony

outside her room, drinking in the smells of the night--the pungent,

earthy smell after rain, the aromatic smell of pine trees near the

house. It was the intoxicating smells of the night that had first

driven her, as a very small child, to clamber down from her balcony,

clinging to the thick ivy roots, to wander with the delightful sense of

wrong-doing through the moonlit park and even into the adjoining gloomy

woods. She had always been utterly fearless.

Her childhood had been a strange one. There had been no near relatives

to interest themselves in the motherless girl left to the tender

mercies of a brother nearly twenty years her senior, who was frankly

and undisguisedly horrified at the charge that had been thrust upon

him. Wrapped up in himself, and free to indulge in the wander hunger

that gripped him, the baby sister was an intolerable burden, and he had

shifted responsibility in the easiest way possible. For the first few

years of her life she was left undisturbed to nurses and servants who

spoiled her indiscriminately. Then, when she was still quite a tiny

child, Sir Aubrey Mayo came home from a long tour, and, settling down

for a couple of years, fixed on his sister's future training, modelled

rigidly on his own upbringing. Dressed as a boy, treated as a boy, she

learned to ride and to shoot and to fish--not as amusements, but

seriously, to enable her to take her place later on as a companion to

the man whose only interests they were. His air of weariness was a

mannerism. In reality he was as hard as nails, and it was his intention

that Diana should grow up as hard. With that end in view her upbringing

had been Spartan, no allowances were made for sex or temperament and

nothing was spared to gain the desired result. And from the first Diana

had responded gallantly, throwing herself heart and soul into the

arduous, strenuous life mapped out for her. The only drawback to a

perfect enjoyment of life were the necessary lessons that had to be

gone through, though even these might have been worse. Every morning

she rode across the park to the rectory for a couple of hours' tuition

with the rector, whose heart was more in his stable than in his parish,

and whose reputation was greater across country than it was in the

pulpit. His methods were rough and ready, but she had brains, and

acquired an astonishing amount of diverse knowledge. But her education

was stopped with abrupt suddenness when she was fifteen by the arrival

at the rectory of an overgrown young cub who had been sent by a

despairing parent, as a last resource, to the muscular rector, and who

quickly discovered what those amongst whom she had grown up had hardly

realised, that Diana Mayo, with the clothes and manners of a boy, was

really an uncommonly beautiful young woman. With the assurance

belonging to his type, he had taken the earliest opportunity of telling

her so, following it with an attempt to secure the kiss that up to now

his own good looks had always secured for him. But in this case he had

to deal with a girl who was a girl by accident of birth only, who was

quicker with her hands and far finer trained than he was, and whose

natural strength was increased by furious rage. She had blacked his

eyes before he properly understood what was happening, and was dancing

around him like an infuriated young gamecock when the rector had burst

in upon them, attracted by the noise.