The Sheik

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?"