The Sheik

"Why are you here, and where is Gaston?"

In a stifled voice she told him everything. What did it matter? If she

tried to be silent he would force her to speak.

He made no comment, and bringing The Hawk nearer tossed her up roughly

into the saddle and swung up behind her, the black breaking at once

into the usual headlong gallop. She made no kind of resistance, a

complete apathy seemed to have come over her. She did not look at the

body of Silver Star, she looked at nothing, clinging to the front of

the saddle, and staring ahead of her unseeingly. She had dropped her

helmet when she fell and she had left it, thankful to be relieved of

the pressure on her aching head. Her mental collapse had affected her

physically, and it needed a real effort of will-power to enable her to

sit up right. Very soon they would join the horsemen, who were waiting

for them, and for her pride's sake she must concentrate all her energy

to avoid betraying her weakness.

Ahmed Ben Hassan did not go back through the defile, he turned into a

little path that Diana had overlooked and which skirted the hills. In

about half-an-hour the troop met them, riding slowly from the opposite

direction. She did not raise her eyes as they approached, but she heard

Yusef's clear tenor voice calling out to the Sheik, who answered

shortly as the men fell in behind him. Back over the ground that she

had traversed so differently. She knew that it had been madness from

the first. She should have known that it could never succeed, that she

could never reach civilisation alone. She had been a fool ever to

imagine that she could win through. The chance that had thrown her

again into the Sheik's power might just as easily have thrown her into

the hands of any other Arab. Luck had helped Ahmed Ben Hassan even as

she herself had unknowingly played into his hands when he had captured

her first. Fate was with him. It was useless to try and struggle

against him any more. Her brain was a confused medley of thoughts that

she was too tired to unravel, strange, conflicting ideas chasing wildly

through her mind. She did not understand them, she did not try. The

effort of thinking made her head ache agonisingly. She was conscious of

a great unrest, a dull aching in her heart and a terrible depression

that was altogether apart from the fear she felt of the Sheik. She gave

up trying to think; she was concerned only with trying to keep her

balance.