The Sheik

Her brother's voice behind her brought her down to earth suddenly.

"You've been a confounded long time."

She turned to the table with a faint smile. "Don't be a bear, Aubrey.

It's all very well for you. You have Stephens to lather your chin and

to wash your hands, but thanks to that idiot Marie, I have to look

after myself."

Sir Aubrey took his heels down leisurely from the second chair, pitched

away his cigar, and, screwing his eyeglass into his eye with more than

usual truculence, looked at her with disapproval. "Are you going to rig

yourself out like that every evening for the benefit of Mustafa Ali and

the camel-drivers?"

"I do not propose to invite the worthy Mustafa to meals, and I am not

in the habit of 'rigging myself out,' as you so charmingly put it, for

any one's benefit. If you think I dress in camp to please you, my dear

Aubrey, you flatter yourself. I do it entirely to please myself. That

explorer woman we met in London that first year I began travelling with

you explained to me the real moral and physical value of changing into

comfortable, pretty clothes after a hard day in breeches and boots. You

change yourself. What's the difference?"

"All the difference," he snapped. "There is no need for you to make

yourself more attractive than you are already."

"Since when has it occurred to you that I am attractive? You must have

a touch of the sun, Aubrey," she replied, with uplifted eyebrows,

drumming impatiently with her fingers on the table.

"Don't quibble. You know perfectly well that you are good-looking--too

good-looking to carry through this preposterous affair."

"Will you please tell me what you are driving at?" she asked quietly.

But the dark blue eyes fixed on her brother's face were growing darker

as she looked at him.

"I've been doing some hard thinking to-day, Diana. This tour you

propose is impossible."

"Isn't it rather late in the day to find that out?" she interrupted

sarcastically; but he ignored the interruption.

"You must see for yourself, now that you are face to face with the

thing, that it is impossible. It's quite unthinkable that you can

wander for the next month all alone in the desert with those damned

niggers. Though my legal guardianship over you terminated last

September I still have some moral obligations towards you. Though it

has been convenient to me to bring you up as a boy and to regard you in

the light of a younger brother instead of a sister, we cannot get away

from the fact that you are a woman, and a very young woman. There are

certain things a young woman cannot do. If you had been the boy I

always wished you were it would have been a different matter, but you

are not a boy, and the whole thing is impossible--utterly impossible."

There was a fretful impatience in his voice.