She turned the pages, dipping here and
there, finally forgetting the author altogether in the book. It was a
wonderful story of a man's love and faithfulness, and Diana pushed it
aside at last with a very bitter sigh. Things happened so in books. In
real life they happened very differently. She looked round the room
with pain-filled eyes, at the medley of her own and the Sheik's
belongings, her ivory toilet appointments jostling indiscriminately
among his brushes and his razors on the dressing-table, and then at the
pillow beside her where his head rested every night. She stooped and
kissed it with a little quivering breath. "Ahmed. Oh, Monseigneur!" she
murmured longingly. Then, with an impatient jerk of the head, she
sprang up and dragged on her boots. She pulled a soft felt hat down
over her eyes and picked up the revolver the Sheik had given her. She
paused a moment, looking at it with an odd smile before buckling it
round her slim waist. Gaston's face lit up with genuine pleasure when
she came out to the horses. She had felt a momentary embarrassment
before she left the tent, thinking of the last time he had ridden with
her, but she had known from the moment he came back that night that he
bore no malice, and the look on his face and his stammered words to the
Sheik had indicated that the fear he felt for her was not for what
might have happened in the desert, but for what might yet happen to her
at the hands of his master and hers.
The horse that she rode always now was pure white, not so fast as
Silver Star and very tricky, called The Dancer, from a nervous habit of
dancing on his hind-legs at starting and stopping, like a circus-horse.
He was difficult to mount, and edged away shyly as Diana tried to get
her foot into the stirrup. But she swung up at last, and by the time
The Dancer had finished his display of haute ecole Gaston was
mounted. "After riding The Dancer I feel confident to enter for the
Concours Hippique," she laughed over her shoulder, and touched
the horse with her heel.
She wanted exercise primarily, hard physical exercise that would tire
her out and keep her mind occupied and prevent her from thinking, and
the horse she rode supplied both needs. He required watching all the
time. She let him out to his full pace for his own sake and hers, and
the air and the movement banished her headache, and a kind of
exhilaration came over her, making her almost happy. After a while she
reined in her horse and waved to Gaston to come alongside. "Tell me of
this Vicomte de Saint Hubert who is coming. You know him, I suppose, as
you have been so long with Monseigneur?"