The Sheik

She pushed him down at length, and with her hand on his collar went

into the other room. A solitary lamp burned dimly. She crossed to the

doorway and pulled aside the flap, and a small, white-clad figure rose

up before her.

"Is that you, Gaston?" she asked involuntarily, though she knew that

the question was unnecessary, for he always slept across the entrance

to the tent when the Sheik was away.

"A votre service, Madame."

For a few minutes she did not speak, and Gaston stood silent beside

her. She might have remembered that he was there. He never stirred far

beyond the sound of her voice whenever she was alone in the camp. He

was always waiting, unobtrusive, quick to carry out her requests, even

to anticipate them. With him standing beside her she thought of the

time when they had fought side by side--all difference in rank eclipsed

in their common danger. The servant had been merged into the man, and a

man who had the courage to do what he had attempted when he had faced

her at what had seemed the last moment with his revolver clenched in a

hand that had not shaken, a man at whose side and by whose hand she

would have been proud to die. They were men, these desert dwellers,

master and servants alike; men who endured, men who did things, inured

to hardships, imbued with magnificent courage, splendid healthy

animals. There was nothing effete or decadent about the men with whom

Ahmed Ben Hassan surrounded himself.

Diana had always liked Gaston; she had been touched by his unvarying

respectful attitude that had never by a single word or look conveyed

the impression that he was aware of her real position in his master's

camp. He treated her as if she were indeed what from the bottom of her

heart she wished she was. He was solicitous without being officious,

familiar with no trace of impertinence, He was Diana's first experience

of a class of servant that still lingers in France, a survival of

pre-Revolution days, who identify themselves entirely with the family

they serve, and in Gaston's case this interest in his master had been

strengthened by experiences shared and dangers faced which had bound

them together with a tie that could never be broken and had raised

their relations on to a higher plane than that of mere master and man.

Those relations had at first been a source of perpetual wonder to

Diana, brought up in the rigid atmosphere of her brother's

establishment, where Aubrey's egoism gave no opportunity for anything

but conventional service, and in their wanderings, where personal

servants had to be often changed. Even Stephens was, in Aubrey's eyes,

a mere machine.