He was too engrossed to notice the usual noise in the camp that
heralded the Sheik's arrival, and he looked up with a start when Ahmed
Ben Hassan swept in. The Sheik's dark eyes glanced sombrely around the
tent and without a word he went through into the inner room. In a
moment he came hack.
"Where is Diane?"
Saint Hubert got up, puzzled at his tone. He looked at his watch. "She
went for a ride this morning. Dieu! I had no idea it was so
late."
"This morning!--and not back yet?" repeated the Sheik slowly. "What
time this morning?"
"About ten, I think," replied Saint Hubert uneasily. "I'm not sure. I
didn't look. There was an accident, and she delayed to watch me tie up
one of your foolish children who had been playing with a worthless
gun."
The Sheik moved over to the doorway. "She had an escort?" he asked
curtly.
"Yes."
Ahmed Ben Hassan's face hardened and the heavy scowl contracted his
black brows. Had she all these weeks been tricking him--feigning a
content she did not feel, lulling his suspicions to enable her to seize
another opportunity to attempt to get away? For a moment his face grew
dark, then he put the thought from him. He trusted her. Only a week
before she had given him her word, and he knew she would not lie to
him. And, besides, the thing was impossible. Gaston would never be
caught napping a second time, and there were also the six men who
formed her guard. She would never be able to escape the vigilance of
seven men. But it was the trust he had in her that weighed most with
him. He had never trusted a woman before, but this woman had been
different. The others who had come and gone so lightly had not even
left a recollection behind them; they had faded into one concrete cause
of utter boredom. There had never been any reason to trust or mistrust
them, or to care if they came or went. Satiety had come with possession
and with it indifference. But the emotion that this girl's uncommon
beauty and slender boyishness had aroused in him had not diminished
during the months she had been living in his camp. Her varying moods,
her antagonism, her fits of furious rage, and, lastly, her unexpected
surrender, had kept his interest alive. He had grown accustomed to her.
He had come to looking forward with a vague, indefinite pleasure, on
returning from his long expeditions, to seeing the dainty little figure
curled up among the cushions on the big divan. Her presence seemed to
pervade the atmosphere of the whole tent, changing it utterly. She had
become necessary to him as he had never believed it possible that a
woman could be. And with the change that she had made in his camp there
had come a change in himself also.