The Sheik

"I mustn't! I mustn't!" she whispered in a kind of desperation. "If I

cry again I shall go mad." She forced them back, and crossing to the

big black divan that she had scorned before dropped down among the soft

cushions. She was so tired, and her head throbbed persistently.

She was asleep when the servant brought tea, but she started up as he

put the tray on a stool beside her.

"It is Madame's own tea. If she will be good enough to say if it is

made to her taste," he said anxiously, as if his whole happiness was

contained in the tiny teapot at which he was frowning deprecatingly.

His assiduity jarred on Diana's new-found jangling nerves. She

recognised that he was sincere in his efforts to please her, but just

now they only seemed an added humiliation. She longed to shout "Go

away!" like an angry schoolboy, but she managed to give him the

information he wanted, and putting cigarettes and matches by her he

went out with a little smile of satisfaction. The longing for fresh air

and the desire to see what place she had been brought to grew

irresistible as the evening came nearer. She went to the open doorway.

A big awning stretched before it, supported on lances. She stepped out

from under its shade and looked about her wonderingly. It was a big

oasis--bigger than any she had seen. In front of the tent there was an

open space with a thick belt of palm trees beyond. The rest of the camp

lay behind the Chief's tent. The place was alive with men and horses.

There were some camels in the distance, but it was the horses that

struck Diana principally. They were everywhere, some tethered; some

wandering loose, some exercising in the hands of grooms. Mounted Arabs

on the outskirts of the oasis crossed her view occasionally. There were

groups of men engaged on various duties all around her. Those who went

by near her salaamed as they passed, but took no further notice of her.

A strange look came into Diana's eyes. This was the desert indeed, the

desert as she had never expected to see it, the desert as few could

expect to see it. But the cost! She shuddered, then turned at a sudden

noise near her. A biting, screaming chestnut fury was coming past close

to the tent, taking complete charge of the two men who clung, yelling,

to his head. He was stripped, but Diana recognised him at once. The one

brief view she had had of his small, vicious head as he shot past her

elbow the evening before was written on her brain for all time. He came

to a halt opposite Diana, refusing to move, his ears laid close to his

head, quivering all over, snatching continually at his grooms, who

seemed unable to cope with him. Once he swung up on his hind legs and

his cruel teeth flashed almost into the face of one of the men, who was

taken off his guard, and who dropped on to the ground, rolling out of

the way with a howl that provoked a shout of laughter from a knot of

Arabs who had gathered to watch the usual evening eccentricities of the

chestnut.