The Sheik

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.