The Sheik

"Zilah is careless. Insist that she puts away your boots, and does not

leave your clothes lying on the floor. There was a scorpion in the

bathroom to-day," he said lazily, stretching out his long legs.

She flushed hotly, as she always did when he made any casual reference

to the intimacy of their life. It was his casualness that frightened

her, the carelessly implied continuance of a state that scorched her

with shame. His attitude invariably suggested a duration of their

relations that left her numb with a kind of helpless despair. He was so

sure of himself, so sure of his possession of her.

She felt the warm blood pouring over her face now, up to the roots of

her bright hair and dyeing her slender neck, and she put her hands up

to her head, her fingers thrust through her loose curls, to shield her

face from his eyes.

She gave a sigh of relief when Gaston came in bringing a little tray

with two filigree-cased cups of coffee.

"I have brought coffee; Madame's tea is finished," he murmured in tones

of deepest distress, and with a gesture that conveyed a national

calamity.

There had been just enough tea taken on the tour to last a month. It

was another pin-prick, another reminder. She set her teeth, moving her

head angrily, and found herself looking into a pair of mocking eyes,

and, as always, her own dropped.

Gaston said a few words in Arabic to his master, and the Sheik

swallowed the boiling coffee and went out hastily. The valet moved

about the tent with his usual deft noiselessness, gathering up

cigarette ends and spent matches, and tidying the room with an

assiduous orderliness that was peculiarly his own. Diana watched him

almost peevishly. Was it the influence of the desert that made all

these men cat-like in their movements, or was the servant consciously

or unconsciously copying his master? With a sudden fit of childish

irritability she longed to smash something, and, with an impetuous

hand, sent the little inlaid table with the tray and coffee-cups

flying. She was ashamed of the impulse even before the crash came, and

looked at Gaston clearing up the debris with anxious eyes. What was the

matter with her? The even temper on which she prided herself and the

nerves that had been her boast had vanished, gone by the board in the

last month. If her nerve failed her utterly what would become of her?

What would she do?

Gaston had gone, and she looked around the tent with a hunted

expression. There seemed no escape possible from the misery that was

almost more than she could bear.