The Sheik

Near her Gaston was clearing away the table and as he finished he

paused to speak to his master. Diana heard the words "le petit Sheik,"

but the rest was in Arabic and unintelligible to her. The Sheik frowned

with a gesture of annoyance, then nodded, and the servant left the

tent.

A few moments after a voice that she had not heard before made her look

up.

The young Arab who had ridden in with the Sheik was standing beside the

divan. The fierce eyes that were watching her every movement met hers,

and his cigarette was waved towards the young man. "My lieutenant,

Yusef, a son of the desert with the soul of a flaneur. His body

is here with me, but his heart is on the trottoirs of Algiers."

The tall lad laughed and salaamed profoundly, then straightened

himself, posing magnificently until a curt word from the Sheik recalled

him to his errand and his swagger changed swiftly to a deference of

which the significance was not lost on Diana. The Arab might unbend to

his people if it so pleased him, but he kept them well in hand. She

looked at the lieutenant as he stood before his chief. He was tall and

slender as a girl, with an air of languid indolence that was obviously

a pose, for it was slipping from him now fast as he talked. His face

was strikingly handsome, only saved from effeminacy by a firm chin. He

was patently aware of his good looks. But he was also patently in awe

of his chief, and the news that he brought was apparently not welcome.

Through her thick lashes Diana watched them intently. The younger man

voluble, gesticulating, at times almost cringing. The Sheik silent,

except for an occasional word, the heavy scowl back on his face,

growing blacker every moment. At last with a shrug of impatience he got

up and they went out together, the hound following them. Diana subsided

on to the thick rug beside the bookcase. For a moment again she was

alone, free of the watching eyes that seemed to be burning into her all

the time, free of the hated proximity. She dropped her head on her

knees with a little whimper of weariness. For a moment she need not

check the tide of misery that rushed over her. She was tired in mind

and body, exhausted with the emotion that had shaken her until she knew

that no matter what happened in the future the Diana of yesterday was

dead, and her new self was strange and unfamiliar. She did not trust

it; she feared its capacity for maintaining the struggle she had

resolved upon.