The Sheik

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.