The Sheik

She followed him to the door, the revolver dangling from her hand, and

watched him mount and ride away. His horsemanship was superb and her

eyes glowed as they followed him. She went back into the tent and

slipped the revolver into the holster he had left lying on a stool,

and, tucking it and Saint Hubert's novel, which she took from the

bookcase, under her arm, went into the bed-room and, calling to Zilah

to pull off her riding-boots, threw herself on the bed to laze away the

morning, and to try and picture the author from the book he had

written.

She hated him in advance; she was jealous of him and of his coming. The

Sheik's sudden new tenderness had given rise to a hope she hardly dared

allow herself to dwell upon. Might not the power that she had exercised

over other men be still extended to him in spite of the months that he

had been indifferent to anything except the mere physical attraction

she had for him? Was it not possible that out of that attraction might

develop something finer and better than the primitive desire she had

aroused? Oriental though he was, might he not be capable of a deep and

lasting affection? He might have loved her if no outside influence had

come to interrupt the routine that had become so intimately a part of

his life. Those other episodes to which he had referred so lightly had

been a matter of days or weeks, not months, as in her case. He might

have cared but for the coming of this Frenchman. She hurled Saint

Hubert's book across the room in a fit of girlish rage and buried her

head in her arms.

He would be odious--a smirking, conceited egotist!

She had met several French writers and she visualised him

contemptuously. His books were undoubtedly clever. So much the worse;

he would be correspondingly inflated. His novel revealed a passionate,

emotional temperament that promised to complicate the situation if he

should be pleased to cast an eye of favour on her. She writhed at the

very thought. And that he was to see her was evident; the Sheik had

left no orders to the contrary. It was not to be the case of the Dutch

traveller, when the fact that she belonged to an Arab had been brought

home to her effectually by Ahmed Ben Hassan's peremptory commands, and

she had experienced for the first time the sensation of a woman kept in

seclusion.

The emotions of the morning and the disappointment of the intended

ride, together with the dismay produced by the unexpected visitor, all

combined to agitate her powerfully, and she worked herself up into a

fever of self-torture and unhappiness. She ended by falling asleep and

slept heavily for some hours. Zilah waked her with a shy hand on her

arm and a soft announcement of lunch, and Diana sat up, rubbing her

eyes, flushed and drowsy. She stared uncomprehendingly for a moment at

the Arab girl, and then waved her away imperiously and buried her head

in the pillows again. Lunch, when her heart was breaking!