He had only seen Ibraheim Omair once when, ten years before, he had
gone with the elder Ahmed Ben Hassan to a meeting of the more powerful
chiefs at Algiers, arranged under the auspices of the French
Government, to confer on a complicated boundary question that had
threatened an upheaval amongst the tribes which the nominal protectors
of the country were afraid would be prejudicial to their own prestige,
as it would have been beyond their power to quell. He had chafed at
having to meet his hereditary enemy on equal terms, and only the
restraining influence of the old Sheik, who exacted an unquestioning
obedience that extended even to his heir, had prevented a catastrophe
that might have nullified the meeting and caused infinitely more
complications than the original boundary dispute. But the memory of the
robber Sheik remained with him always, and the recollection of his
bloated, vicious face and gross, unwieldy body rose clearly before him
now.
Ibraheim Omair and the slender daintiness that he had prized so
lightly. Diane! His teeth met through the cigarette in his mouth. His
senseless jealousy and the rage provoked by Raoul's outspoken criticism
had recoiled on the innocent cause. She, not Saint Hubert, had felt the
brunt of his anger. In the innate cruelty of his nature it had given
him a subtle pleasure to watch the bewilderment, alternating with
flickering fear, that had come back into the deep blue eyes that for
two months had looked into his with frank confidence. He had made her
acutely conscious of his displeasure. Only last night, when his lack of
consideration and his unwonted irritability had made her wince several
times during the evening and after Saint Hubert had gone to his own
tent, he, had looked up to find her eyes fixed on him with an
expression that, in his dangerous mood, had excited all the brutality
of which he was capable, and had filled him with a desire to torture
her. The dumb reproach in her eyes had exasperated him, rousing the
fiendish temper that had been hardly kept in check all the previous
week. And yet, when he held her helpless in his arms, quivering and
shrinking from the embrace that was no caress, but merely the medium of
his anger, and the reproach in her wavering eyes changed to mute
entreaty, the pleasure he had anticipated in her fear had failed him as
it had before, and had irritated him further. The wild beating of her
heart, the sobbing intake of her breath, the knowledge of his power
over her, gave him no gratification, and he had flung her from him
cursing her savagely, till she had fled into the other room with her
hands over her ears to shut out the sound of his slow, deliberate
voice. And this morning he had left her without a sign of any kind, no
word or gesture that might have effaced the memory of the previous
night. He had not meant to, he had intended to go back to her before he
finally rode away, but Saint Hubert's refusal to accompany him had
killed the softer feelings that prompted him, and his rage had flamed
up again.