This was one of the few possibilities of which Max had not thought. He

had imagined Stanton remaining sullenly in his tent as if nothing had

happened, or searching for Sanda and ordering, perhaps even forcing, her

to go back with him. In that eventuality, and that only, Max intended to

interfere. One side of his nature, the violent and uncontrolled side,

which every real man has in him, wanted to "smash" Stanton; yearned for

an excuse perhaps even to kill him and rid Sanda forever of a brute, no

matter what the consequences to himself. But the side of him where

common sense had taken refuge wished to keep neutral for Sanda's sake,

in order to watch over her and protect her through everything. When he

heard Stanton's call he was not far from the tent he had lent Sanda.

She, and everything of hers which she could need for the night, was

already there, but she had not lighted the candle he had given her. The

little khaki-coloured tent was an inconspicuous object in sand of the

same colour. Making an excuse of settling a dispute between two camels

which disturbed the peace, Max had kept near the tent, and intended,

unobtrusively, to play sentinel all night.

He answered the "Chief's" call on the instant, braced for any emergency.

"St. George, do you know where my wife is?" Stanton asked.

"She told me she felt ill, and that you wouldn't object to my lending

her my tent," answered Max promptly.

"I felt sure she'd go to _you_," said Stanton, without the signs of

anger Max expected. Then still greater was the younger man's surprise

when the elder laughed. It was a slightly embarrassed laugh, but not

ill-natured. "What else did she tell you?" Stanton wanted to know.

"She _told_ me--nothing else." To save his life, Max could not resist

that telltale emphasis which flung a challenge.

Stanton laughed again and thrust his hands deep into his pockets.

"I see you've drawn your own conclusions. Fact is, St. George, I'm in a

deuce of a damned scrape, and the only bit of luck is having a sensible

chap of my own colour, a friend of both sides, a gentleman and a soldier

like you, to talk it out with. You'd like to help, wouldn't you, for the

father's sake if not the daughter's?"

"Yes," said Max, after a hair's breadth of hesitation. He was so taken

aback by Stanton's attitude that he feared the other man might be

drawing him out in some subtle way detrimental to Sanda.

"I was sure you would. Well! I'm going to tell you the facts.

"You're a man of the world, I expect, or you wouldn't have found your

way into the Legion. Before I had any idea of marriage I thought of

carrying along a--companion, only an Arab dancing-girl, but I'd take my

oath there hasn't been a more fascinating creature since Cleopatra. A

gorgeous woman! No man on earth--not if he were an emperor or king--but

would lose his head over her, if she tried to make him. No treachery to

Sanda in the plan. The child didn't enter into my calculations then. It

struck me, after I'd asked you to see to my tent, you might spot

something--from that mirror."

"I did," Max admitted.

"Oh, well, anyhow, to make a long story short, the girl flew into one of

those black rages of the petted dancer men have made a damned fuss over,

and she disappeared. Lucky for Sanda! If Ahmara'd been with me I'd have

had to see Mademoiselle wend her way to Touggourt with you. But as it

was, in all good faith, I let myself go--one of my impulses that carry

me along. I attribute most of my success in life to impulses;

inspirations I call them. I honestly thought this was one, and that it

would make for my happiness. But by jove, St. George, when I took Sanda

into my tent an hour ago if there wasn't Ahmara waiting for me!"

He stopped an instant, as if expecting Max to speak, but when only dull

silence answered he hurried on.

"She hadn't got the news of my marriage. She wanted to give me a

pleasant surprise by forgiving me, and coming out here secretly, ahead

of the caravan, to hide in my tent. Her arms were round my neck before I

knew what was up--and the smell of '_ambre_' that's always in that long

hair of hers--God, what hair!--was in my nose. Unfortunately Sanda had

been picking up Arabic; so she understood some things Ahmara blurted out

before I could stop her. She got on to the fact that there'd been a

row--a sort of lover's quarrel--and if it hadn't been for a

misunderstanding, Ahmara would have started out with me in her

place--_practically_ in her place. No need to tell you more except that

Sanda and I had a few words, after she'd refused to see the situation in

the right light. I was sure she'd appeal to you. I am glad you thought

of offering her your tent. I shall leave her to stew in her own juice

to-night, and come slowly to her senses. She's too fond of me not to do

that before long."

"When you've sent that woman away to-morrow----" Max began. But Stanton

cut him short.

"I shan't send her away to-morrow."

"What? You----"

"Sanda had the childish impudence to tell me to-night that nothing could

ever make any difference between us after what had passed. Perhaps it

was partly my fault, for I lost my head for a minute when she accused me

of tricking her into marrying me, or words to that effect. I'm afraid I

said she had forced _me_ into it--thrown herself at me--taken me

unawares--something of that sort. In a way it's true. Heart caught in

the rebound! But I wouldn't have been cad enough to throw it up to her

if she hadn't said things so silly that a saint would have been wild.

The girl vows she won't live with me as my wife. Well, I shall hold

Ahmara as a threat over her head till she sees the error of her ways.

It's the one thing to do, as I look at it. Besides, if I try to pack

Ahmara back to Touggourt she'll screech like a hen with her head cut

off. I won't be made a laughing stock before my men, at the start,

before I've shown them what sort of a leader they've got. Ahmara comes

from the south. If Sanda decides to behave herself I'll drop the dancer

at her own place, _en route_. Meanwhile, I'll have time for bargaining

over her with my wife, and Ahmara can travel with the other women.

Several men with their wives have agreed to go only part of the way and

get new fellows to join when they leave. That's the only way to shed

Ahmara without trouble, as she's landed herself on me. And that's the

way I'll take--as I said, if Sanda behaves herself."

"And if--not? I suppose you'll send--Mrs. Stanton back?"

"Damnation, I can't do that, St. George, and you know it. It would mean

a duel with her father, and all the world would be down on me just at

the time I'm bidding highest for its applause. If Sanda travels with me,

whether she lives with me or not, she'll keep her mouth shut. She's that

kind of girl. Don't you, as her friend--or anyhow, her father's

friend--know her well enough to understand that?"

"I may think I'd know what _she'd_ do," Max flung back at the other.

"But God knows what _I'd_ do if you insulted Mademoiselle DeLisle--Mrs.

Stanton, I mean--by keeping that woman in the caravan. I believe I'd

kill you!"

Stanton stared. "Good Lord!" he exclaimed, in a change of mood, looking

suddenly like a great helpless schoolboy arraigned, "I thought I was

talking to a friend. I was asking your advice, and you turn on me like a

tiger. See here, St. George, if you're going to bite the hand I offer,

_you'd_ better be the one to go."

Max was staggered. He had made a false move. He could not go. Now, more

than ever, a thousand times more, Sanda needed a friend, and he was the

only one within reach. Perhaps he could not always help, but he could at

least keep near. Only these unexpected confidences from Stanton could

have made him so lose grip upon himself; and it must not happen again.

"I've just given you my advice," Max reminded the other more quietly.

"I can't take it."

"Then don't. We'll leave it at that."

"I ask no better. Do you want to go or stay?"

"I want to stay."

"Very well, then. I need a man like you, and I want you to stay, if

you'll mind your own business."

"I will," Max promised fervently.

But as to what his business was, there might be different opinions.

* * * * *

As the long days passed and the caravan toiled on through dunes and

alkali deserts and strange, hidden mountainlands, it was hard to keep

before his eyes the best way of "minding his own business"--the best way

for Sanda. That which was highest in him prayed for peace between her

and Stanton. That which was lowest wished for war. And it was war. Not

loud, open warfare, but a silent battle never ceasing; and the one hope

left in Sanda's heart for her own future was death in the desert. She

had determined to go on, and she would go on; but blinding, blessed suns

of noon might strike her dead; she might take some malarial fever in the

swampy, saltpetre deserts through which the caravan must travel. There

were also scorpions and vipers. These things she had heard of as among

the minor perils of Stanton's expedition, and there were many more

formidable, of course, such as Touaregs and Tibbu brigands. She made Max

swear that, if they were attacked, and there were danger for the women,

he would shoot her with his own hand. That would not be a bad solution.

And there were others. Her father had said that nearly all experts

prophesied annihilation for Stanton and his men.

Sanda did not "behave herself." Nothing less than force could have

dragged her to Stanton's tent, and the man openly found consolation with

Ahmara; at first, perhaps, partly in defiance, but, as time went on,

because such love as he had to give was for the "most fascinating

creature since Cleopatra." For the men of the caravan there was nothing

very startling in this arrangement. The law of their religion and

country gave each of them four wives, if he could afford to keep them.

Ahmara, darkly beautiful and bejewelled, condescended to travel with the

other women of her race, but when the camp was made she moved about

proudly, like an eastern queen, and went wherever it was her will to go.

Sometimes she passed nearer than was necessary to Sanda's tent, and

turning her crowned head on its full round throat let her long eyes

dwell on the rival who ignored her existence.

The life she had undertaken would have been impossible for Sanda without

Max. If he had not been there, a self-appointed watchdog, Ahmara would

certainly have insulted Stanton's white bride, or might even have

attempted to kill her. But Ahmara was afraid of Max St. George. She had

caught a murderous glint in his eye more than once, and knew that if she

crossed a certain dead line which that look defined he would not

hesitate to deal with her as with a wildcat.

As for Sanda, if she ever thought that Ahmara might stab her some night

when Max was off guard, she told herself that she did not care. She

longed for death as the one way out of the cage into which she had

foolishly flown, and would have prayed for it, if such a prayer were not

to her mind sacrilegious. She was too young to realize that to wish is

to pray. Sanda was always hoping that something might happen to put an

end to everything for her. She disregarded precautions which others took

against sunstroke. If there came up a sandstorm she stole away and faced

it while the rest sheltered, longing to be overwhelmed and blotted out

of existence. But it seemed extraordinarily difficult to die. And then,

there was always Max. Unfailingly he was on the spot to ward off danger,

or to save her from the effects of what he called her "carelessness,"

though he must have guessed the meaning underneath alleged imprudences.

Sanda never confided in Max, yet she was aware that he could not help

knowing why she refused to live with Stanton. She could not bear to

speak of her humiliation, and Max would have cut his tongue out rather

than let slip a word concerning it after his first vain appeal.

As time went on and the caravan advanced on its march across the desert,

Stanton ignored the presence of Sanda as she ignored Ahmara's. She ate

and slept in her own tent, which had been Max's. He it was who saw that

she had good food and filtered water. Wherever fruit could be got, by

fair means or foul, there was some for her, whether others had it or

not. Max made coffee and tea for Sanda. He tended the camel she rode in

order that it might be strong and in good health. When the caravan came

into the country of the Touaregs he rode near her day by day, and at

night lay as close to her tent as he dared. Sometimes he noticed that

Stanton eyed him cynically when he performed unostentatious services for

Sanda, but outwardly the only two white men were on civil terms. Stanton

even seemed glad of Max's companionship, and discussed routes and

prospects with him, asking his advice sometimes; and once, when the

explorer was attacked by a Soudanese maddened by the sun and Stanton's

brutality, Max struck up the black man's weapon; almost before he knew

what he was doing he had saved the life of Sanda's husband.

"Why did I do it?" he asked himself afterward. Yet he knew some strange

"kink" in his nature would compel him to do the same thing again under

like circumstances.

Stanton, at his best, was an ideal leader of men. Many a forlorn hope he

had led and brought to success through sheer self-confidence and belief

in his star. But whether the failure of his mad marriage had disturbed

his faith in his own persistent luck, or whether Ahmara's influence made

for degeneration, in any case, a blight seemed to have fallen on the

once great man's mentality. It had been a boast of his that, though he

drank freely when "resting on his laurels" in Europe, he was strong

enough to "swear off" at any moment. He had accustomed himself to taking

tea and water only in blazing African heat; and since the serious

illness that followed his sunstroke he had been forbidden to touch

alcohol anywhere, in any circumstances. For a time he had been

frightened into obedience to doctors' orders; but gradually he had

drifted back into old habits; and after his quarrel with Ahmara at

Touggourt he found oblivion in much Scotch whisky, his favourite drink.

Perhaps if all had gone well with Stanton, if Ahmara had not come again

into his life and lost him Sanda's childlike worship, he might have

pulled himself together after the starting of the caravan. But, as it

was, there were black thoughts to be chased away, and the simplest

receipt for replacing them with bright ones was to fill his head with

fumes of whisky.

When Sanda, riding behind her curtains, or shrinking in her tent, heard

Stanton cursing the negro porters, and roaring profane abuse at the

camels and camel-drivers, she did not know that he was drunk; but the

men knew, and, being sober by religion, ceased to respect him. Among

themselves, they began to question the wisdom of his orders, and suspect

him of treachery toward themselves. Losing faith in the leader, they

lost faith in the wonderful hidden oasis he sought, the oasis peopled by

rich Egyptians who had vanished into the desert to escape persecution

after the Sixth Dynasty. Arabs and negroes said it must be true after

all that the "Chief" was mad, and they had been mad to trust themselves

to him, or to believe in the mysterious city lost beyond unexplored

mountains and shifting dunes which were but shrouds for dead men. He was

either deliberately leading them all to death, for the insane pleasure

of it, or else he had some plan for making his own fortune by selling

his escort as slaves. Men began to desert whenever they came to an

attractive stopping-place where there was food and water. They feigned

illness, or fled in the night with their camels into the vastness of the

desert, their faces turned once more to the west. For soon, if they

stayed, they would pass beyond the zone of known oases, into the

terrible land of mystery, charted by no man, a land where it was said

the sun had dried up all the springs of water. So the caravan dwindled

as slowly, painfully it moved toward the east; and even while he hated

him, Max was sometimes moved to pity for the harassed leader. Stanton

grew haggard as the desert closed in round him and his disaffected

followers; but there were days when, instead of sympathizing

reluctantly, Max cursed the explorer for a brute, and cursed himself for

saving the brute's life. There were days when Stanton shot or whipped a

Soudanese for an impudent word, or ordered a forced march because Sanda

had sent to beg respite for some wretch struck down with fever whom she

was nursing.

As the men lost faith in Stanton and his vision of the Lost Oasis they

attached themselves fanatically to the wife of their Chief, the "Little

White Moon," who seldom spoke to her husband save to defend one of their

number from his fits of anger, and who, with her golden hair and her

skin of snow that the fierce sun could not darken, was like the shining

angel who walks at the right hand of a good Mohammedan. They saw no

wrong in Ahmara's presence; but she was haughty and high-tempered, and

took part against them with Stanton. The whisper ran that the

dancing-woman had brought bad luck to the expedition for so long as she

was with the caravan; whereas, if fortune were to come, it would come

through the white girl who nursed the sick and had a smile or a kind

word for the humblest porter. This whisper reached Ahmara's ears through

the wives of the camel-drivers, and at first she was anxious to keep it

from Stanton lest it should prejudice him and put into his head the idea

of leaving her at one of the far apart oasis towns where the caravan

took supplies. But the more she turned over the thought in her

unenlightened mind, the more impossible it seemed to her that Stanton

would give her up. Besides, he was very brave, even braver than the

great chiefs of her own race, for they feared unseen things and omens,

whereas he laughed at their superstition. She used every art of the

professional charmer upon Stanton for the next few days, while she asked

herself whether to tell what she had learnt, or not to tell, were wiser.

When she was convinced that she had made herself more indispensable than

ever, Ahmara put the story into the form that seemed to her very good.

She said that nothing which passed in the caravan could escape her,

because the life of the leader was her life. She wished to be for him

like a lighted candle set at the door of his tent, the flame her spirit,

which felt each breath of evil threatening his safety. The men who hated

the Chief for his power or because he had punished them hated her also

because she was true to him as the blood that beat in his heart.

"Those who are cowards and find the greatness of thy adventures too

great for them, now they have tasted hardship, mutter in secret against

thee," Ahmara said. "There are some who mean to band together and refuse

to follow thee past the last-known oasis which is marked on thy maps.

They say, that from what they have heard, thou art indeed mad to think

that a caravan can live in unknown deserts where there is no water. Once

they believed in thee so firmly if thou hadst told them thou couldst

cause water to spout from dry sand they would have taken thy word for

truth. But now the white girl, who is too proud to be thy wife because

thy faithful one followed thee into the desert, has bewitched the men.

They think she is a _marabouta_, a saint endowed with magic power, and

that her spirit is stronger than thine. They will offer themselves to

_her_ man, when we come to the place where the known way ends, if he

will promise to lead them straight to Egypt, without wandering across

the open desert to seek thy Lost Oasis."

"Her man!" echoed Stanton, the blood suffusing his already bloodshot

eyes as in an instant it reddens those of an angry St. Bernard. "What do

you mean?"

"Thou knowest without my telling, my Chief. The man whose idol she is.

There is but one man--the man who watches over her by day and night, and

makes himself her slave."

"You're a fool, Ahmara," Stanton said roughly. "Don't you suppose I've

got sense enough to see why you want to put such ideas into my head?

You're jealous of my wife. St. George and she are nothing to each other.

As for the men, like as not they growl in your hearing because they hope

you'll repeat their nonsense to me and give me a fright. That's all

there is in it."

"I know thou art a lion and fearest nothing," Ahmara meekly answered.

But next day she saw that Stanton watched Max.

On the following night they came to the oasis of which she had spoken.

It was called Dardaï, and lay between two danger-zones. The first of

these--danger from man--was practically passed at Dardaï, Stanton

calculated, and knew that he had been lucky to bring his caravan through

the land of the Touaregs (which he had risked rather than face almost

certain death along the shorter, more northern way of Tripolitania) with

only a few thefts from marauders and no loss of life by violence.

Perhaps the formidable size of the caravan and the arms it carried had

been its protection, rather than the repute of its leader; but Stanton

took the credit to himself. He told himself that, after all, he had

triumphed over difficulties as no other man in his place could have

done. It was monstrous and incredible that the spirit of the caravan

should have turned against him. He said this over and over, but in his

heart he knew that he had lost prestige through faults in his own

nature, and because of mistakes he had made ever since the bad

beginning. He knew that, although he had brought his followers through

the first danger-zone without too many accidents, the second zone, the

uncharted zone of Libyan desert which stretched before them now, had ten

times more of danger in it than the zone of danger from men. Whisky

could not chase away his gloom that night when he had come to camp from

the house of the sheikh who had entertained him at dinner in the

village, and to whom he had given valuable presents in exchange for help

expected. But if the liquor could not cheer him, it made him conscious

of his own bulldog tenacity.

"I'll show the ungrateful devils who is master," he thought as he

looked out from his tent door to the glow of the fire round which his

men had been watching some naked male dancers of Dardaï. The dancers had

gone, but the watchers had not yet moved. They were talking together

more quietly than usual, in groups. Stanton wondered what they were

saying; and he stared, frowning, over their heads toward the east, where

lay the Libyan desert. They were practically out of the Sahara now.

As he gazed, Ahmara came flitting across a moonlit space of sand that

lay like a silver lake between the tent and the rest of the camp.

"Thou art back, O master of my heart, from thy visit to the sheikh," she

said. "Did it pass off well?"

"Well enough," Stanton answered mechanically. For the moment he was

indifferent to Ahmara, though her strange face was tragically beautiful.

In the pale light the figure of Max St. George became suddenly visible

to him. It moved out from behind the tents and walked over to the fire.

Stanton, on a quick impulse, called out to Max harshly:

"Come here, St. George! I want you; hurry up!"

Ahmara slipped behind Stanton, who took a step forward, and, as he

forgot her, she darted into his tent.

CHAPTER XXVIII

SANDA SPEAKS

It was Max's policy, for Sanda's sake, never to give Stanton a pretext

to send him away. He kept his temper under provocations almost

intolerable; and now he obeyed the truculent summons.

"What do you want?" he asked stiffly when he had come near enough to

speak in an ordinary tone.

"I'll tell you inside my tent," the explorer answered, stalking in first

and leaving his guest to follow. Stanton was somewhat surprised to see

Ahmara sitting on her feet, her ringed hands on her knees, her crowned

head thrown back against the canvas wall; but on the whole, he was not

sorry that she was there. She might be useful. He only smiled

sarcastically when, at sight of her, Max stopped on the threshold.

"Don't be afraid to come in," Stanton laughed; "the lady won't mind."

"But _I_ do," Max returned, with the curt politeness of tone which

irritated Stanton. "I'll stand here if you please."

"All right. My orders won't take long to give. I want you to go to your

friend's tent with a message from me."

"My friend's tent?" Max's eyes sent out a spark in the dull yellow

light.

"My wife's tent, then, if you think the name's more appropriate. I

believe she's likely to favour you as a messenger, and she hasn't gone

to bed, for her tent's lit up. Tell her from me, I find it subversive of

discipline in this caravan for a woman to set her will up against the

leader and live apart from her husband. Entirely for that reason and not

because I want anything to do with her, after the way I've been treated,

I've made up my mind that she and I must live together like other

married people. I wish the change to be made with the knowledge of the

whole caravan. Go and tell her to come here; and then give my orders to

Mahmoud and Zaid to bring anything over she may need."

If eyes could kill, Stanton would have dropped like a felled ox. But Max

would not give him the satisfaction of a blow or even of a word. With a

look of disgust such as he might have thrown at a wallowing drunkard in

a gutter, St. George turned his back on the explorer and walked away.

Before he could escape out of earshot, however, the Chief was bawling

instructions to Ahmara.

"Since that fellow is above taking a message, go you, and deliver it,"

roared Stanton, repeating in Arabic the orders flung at Max. "Her

ladyship knows enough of your language to understand. Say to her, if she

isn't at my tent door in ten minutes I'll fetch her. She won't like

that."

Max had not meant to go near Sanda, but fearing insult for her from the

Arab woman, he changed his mind, and put himself between Ahmara and

Sanda's tent. As the tall figure in its full white robes came floating

toward him in the moonlight, he blocked the way. But the dancer did not

try to pass. She paused and whispered sharply: "Thinkest thou I want the

girl to go to him? No, I'd kill her sooner. But he is watching. Let me

only tell her to beware of him. If she is out of her tent when he

searches, what can he do? And by to-morrow night I shall have had time

to make him change his mind."

"You shan't speak to Mrs. Stanton if I can help it," said Max. "Besides,

I won't trust you near her. You're a she-devil and capable of anything."

"Speak to her at the door thyself, if thou art afraid my breath will

wither thy frail flower," Ahmara sneered. "Tell her to escape quickly

into the shadows of the oasis, for the master will not care to lose his

dignity in hunting her. As for thee, thou canst run to guard her from

harm, as thou hast done before when she wandered, and I will carry word

to the Chief that the White Moon refuses to shine for him. In ten

minutes he will set out to fetch her, according to his word; but when he

finds her tent empty he will return to his own with Ahmara, I promise

thee, to plan some way of punishment. Shelter thy flower from that also

if thou canst, for it may not be to my interest to counsel thee then, as

it is now."

Max turned from the dancer without replying, and she hovered near while

he spoke at the door of Sanda's tent, within which the light had now

gone out.

"Mrs. Stanton!" he called in a low voice. "Mrs. Stanton!"

Sanda did not answer; and he called for the third time, raising his

voice slightly, yet not enough for Stanton to hear at his distance.

Still all was silence inside the tent, though it was not five minutes

since the light had been extinguished, and Sanda could hardly have

fallen asleep. Could she have heard what he and Ahmara were saying? He

wondered. It was just possible, for he had stepped close to the tent in

barring the dancer away from it. If Sanda had heard hurrying footsteps

and voices she might have peeped through the canvas flaps; and having

made an aperture, it would have been easy to catch a few words of

Ahmara's excited whispers.

"Perhaps she took the hint and has gone," Max thought; and an instant

later assured himself that she had done so, for the pegs at the back of

the tent had been pulled out of the sand. The bird had flown, but Max

feared that it might only be from one danger to another. In spite of the

friendly reception given to the caravan at Dardaï, a young woman

straying from camp into the oasis would not be safe for an instant if

seen; and in the desert beyond Sanda might be terrified by jackals or

hyenas. Bending down Max saw, among the larger tracks made by himself

and the men who had helped him pitch the tent, small footprints in the

sand: marks of little shoes which could have been worn by nobody but

Sanda. The toes had pressed in deeply, while the heelprints were

invisible after the first three or four. As soon as she was out of the

tent, Sanda had started to run. She had gone away from the direction of

the dying fire, in front of which the men of the caravan still squatted,

and had taken the track that led toward the oasis. There was a narrow

strip of desert to be crossed, and then a sudden descent over rocks,

down to an _oued_ or river-bed, which gave water to the mud village high

up on the other side. This was the way the oasis dwellers had taken

after a visit of curiosity to the camp; and as the night was bright and

not cold, some might still be lingering in the _oued_, bathing their

feet in the little stream of running water among the smooth, round

stones. Max followed the footprints, but lost them on the rocks, and

would have passed Sanda if a voice had not called him softly.

The girl had found a seat for herself in deep shadow on a small plateau

between two jutting masses of sandstone.

"I saw you," she said as he stopped. "I wondered if you would come and

look for me."

"Weren't you sure?" he asked. "When I found the tent-pegs up, I knew

you'd gone; and I followed the footprints, because it's not safe for you

to be out in the night alone."

"Safer than in my tent, if he----" she began breathlessly, then checked

herself in haste. She was silent for a minute, looking up at Max, who

had come to a stand on the edge of her little platform. Then, for the

first time since she had begged him to join the caravan instead of going

back to Bel-Abbés, she broke down and cried bitterly.

"What am I to do, Soldier?" she sobbed. "You know--I never told you

anything, but--you _know_ how it is with me?"

"I know," said Max.

"I've been always hoping I should die somehow, and--and that would make

an end," the girl wept. "Other people have died since we have started:

three strong men and a woman, one from a viper's bite and the others

with fever. But I can't die! Soldier, you never _let_ me die!"

"I don't mean to!" Max tried to force a ring of cheerfulness into his

voice, though black despair filled his heart. "You've got to live

for--your father."

"I hope I shall never see him again!" she cried sharply. "He'd know the

instant he looked into my eyes that I was unhappy. I couldn't bear it.

Oh, Soldier, if only I had let you take me back when you begged to, even

as late as that morning--before Father Dupré came out from Touggourt.

But it makes things worse to think of that now--of what might have

been!"

"Let's think of what will be, when we get through to Egypt," Max

encouraged her.

"I don't want to get through. The rest of you, yes, but not I! Soldier,

what am I to do if he tries to make--if he won't let me go on living

alone?"

"He _shall_ let you," said Max between his teeth.

"You mean that you--but that would be the worst thing of all, if you

quarrelled with him about me. You've been so wonderful. Don't you think

I've seen?"

Max's heart leaped. What had she seen? His love, or only the acts it

prompted?

"Don't be afraid, that's all," he said. His voice shook a little. As her

face leaned out of the shadow looking up to him, lily-pale under the

moon, he feared her sweetness in the night, feared that it might break

down such strength as he had and make him betray his secret. How he

would hate himself afterward, if in a mad moment he blurted out his love

for this poor child who so needed a faithful friend! In terror of

himself he hurried on. "Better let me take you back now," he suggested

almost harshly. "You can't stay here all night."

"Why can't I?"

"Because--it's best not. I'll walk with you as far as the camels, and

then drop behind--not too far off to be at hand if--anything disturbs

you. Did you hear all that woman said to me?"

"About his looking into my tent and then going back to his own--that

she'd promise he _should_ go back? Yes, I listened before I ran away.

Those were the last words I waited for."

Max was glad she had not overheard the threat of future punishment.

"Well, then, your tent will be safe."

"Safe?" she echoed. "Safe from him--from my _hero_! What fools girls can

be! But perhaps there was never one so foolish as I. It seems æons since

I was that person--that happy, silly person. Well! It doesn't bear

thinking of, much less talking about; and I never did talk before, did

I? We'll go back, since you say we must. But not to my tent. I'd rather

sit by the fire all night, if the men have gone when we get there. After

dawn I can rest, as we're not to travel to-morrow."

She held out both hands to be helped up from her low seat, and Max

fought down the impulse to crush the slender white creature against his

breast. Slowly they walked back over the rocks and through the

moon-white sand, until they could see not only the glow of the fire, but

the smouldering remnants of palm-trunks. Dark, squatting figures were

still silhouetted against the ruddy light, and Sanda paused to consider

what she should do. She stopped Max also, with a hand on his arm.

"It's a wonderful picture, or would be if one were happy!" she muttered;

and then Max could feel some sudden new emotion thrill through her

body. She started, or shivered, and the fingers lying lightly on his

coat-sleeve tightened.

"What is it?" he asked, but got no answer. The girl was standing with

slightly lifted face, her eyes closed, as if behind the shut lids she

saw some vision.

"Sanda!" he breathed. It was the first time he had called her by that

name, though always in his thoughts she was Sanda. "You're frightening

me!"

"Hush!" she said. "I'm remembering a dream; you and I in the desert

together, and you saving me from some danger, I never found out what,

because I woke up too soon. Just now it was as if a voice told me this

was the place of the dream."

What caused Max to tear his eyes from the rapt, white face of the girl

at that instant, and look at the sand, he did not know. But he seemed

compelled to look. Something moved, close to Sanda's feet; something

thin and long and very flat, like a piece of rope pulled quickly toward

her by an unseen hand. Max did not stop to wonder what it was. He

swooped on it and seized the viper's neck between his thumb and finger

and snapped its spine before it had time to strike Sanda's ankle with

its poisoned fang. But not before it had time to strike him.

The keen pin-prick caught him in the ball of the thumb. It did not hurt

much, but Max knew it meant death if the poison found a vein; and he did

not want to die and leave Sanda alone with Stanton. Flinging the dead

viper off, he whipped the knife in his belt from its sheath, and with

its sharp blade slit through the skin deep into the flesh. A slight

giddiness mounted like the fumes from a stale wine-vat to his head as

he cut down to the bone and hacked off a bleeding slice of his right

hand, then cauterized the wound with the flame of a match; but he was

hardly conscious of the pain in the desperate desire to save a life

necessary to Sanda. It was of her he thought then, not of himself at all

as an entity wishing to live for its own pleasure or profit; and he was

dimly conscious, as the blood spurted from his hand, of hoping that

Sanda did not see. He would have told her not to look, but the need to

act was too pressing to give time for words. Neither he nor she had

uttered a sound since his dash for the viper had shaken her clinging

fingers from his arm; and it was only when the poisoned flesh and the

burnt match had been flung after the dead snake that Max could glance at

the girl.

When he did turn his eyes to her, it was with scared apology. He was

afraid he had made her faint if she had seen that sight; luckily,

though, blood wasn't quite so horrid by moonlight as by day.

"I'm sorry!" he stammered. But the words died on his lips. She was

looking straight at him with a wonderful, transfiguring look. Many

fleeting expressions he had seen on that face of his adoration, but

never anything like this. He did not dare to think he could read it, and

yet--yet----

"Have you given your life for me this time?" she asked, in a strange,

deadly quiet tone.

"No, no. I shall be all right now I've got rid of the poison," he

answered. "I'll bind my hand up with this handkerchief----"

"I'll bind it," she cut him short; and taking the handkerchief from him

she tore it quickly into strips. Then with practised skill she bandaged

the wound. "That must do till we get to my tent," she told him. "There

I've lint and real bandages that I use for the men when they hurt

themselves, and I'll sponge your hand with disinfectant. But, my

Soldier, my poor Soldier, how can I bear it if you leave me? You won't,

will you?"

"Not if I can possibly help it," said Max.

"How soon can we be sure that you've cut all the poison out?"

"In a few minutes, I think."

"And if you haven't, it's--death?"

"I can't let myself die," Max exclaimed.

"It's for my sake you care like that, I know!" Sanda said. "And _I_

can't let you die--anyhow, without telling you something first. Does the

poison, if you've got it in you, kill very quickly?"

"It does, rather," Max admitted, still apologetically, because he could

not bear to have Sanda suffer for him. "But it's a painless sort of an

end, not a bad one, if it wasn't for--for----"

"For leaving me alone. I understand. And because you may have to--very

soon, though I pray not--I shall tell you what I never would have told

you except for this. Only, if you get well, you must promise not to

speak of it to me--nor even to seem to remember; and truly to forget, if

you can."

"I promise," Max said.

"It's this: I know you care for me, Max, and I care for you, too,

dearly, dearly. All the love I had ready for Richard flowed away from

him, like a river whose course had been changed in a night by a

tremendous shock of earthquake. Gradually it turned toward you. You won

it. You deserve it. I should be a wretch--I shouldn't be natural if I

didn't love you! That's all I had to tell. I couldn't let you go without

knowing. And if you do go, I shall follow you soon, because I couldn't

live through a day more of my awful life without you."

"Now I _know_ that I can't die!" Max's voice rang out. "If there was

poison in my blood, it's killed with the joy of what you've said to me."

"Joy!" Sanda echoed. "There can be no joy for us in loving each other,

only sorrow."

"There's joy in love itself," said Max. "Just in knowing."

"Though we're never to speak of it again?"

"Even though we're never to speak of it again."

So they came to Sanda's tent; and Stanton, sitting in his open doorway,

saw them arrive together. With great strides he crossed the strip of

desert between the two tents, and thrust his red face close to the

blanched face of Max. His eyes spoke the ugly thing that was in his mind

before his lips could utter it. But Sanda gave him no time for words

that would be unforgivable.

"I had gone to the river," she said, with a hint of pride and command in

her voice that Max had never heard from her. It forbade doubt and rang

clear with courage. "Monsieur St. George was afraid for me, and came to

bring me back. On the way he killed a viper that would have bitten me,

and was bitten himself. He has cut out the flesh round the wound and

cauterized it; and he will live, please God, with care and rest."

Taken aback by the challenging air of one who usually shrank from him,

Stanton was silenced. Sanda's words and manner carried conviction; and

even before she spoke he had failed in goading himself to believe evil.

Drunk, he had for the moment lost all instincts of a gentleman; but,

though somehow the impulse to insult Sanda was beaten down, the wish to

punish her survived. Max's wound and the fever sure to follow, if he

lived, gave Stanton a chance for revenge on both together, which

appealed to the cruelty in him. Besides, it offered the brutal opening

he wanted to show his authority over the sullenly mutinous men.

"Sorry, but St. George will have to do the best he can without rest,"

Stanton announced harshly. "We start at four-thirty. It is to be a

surprise call."

"But we were to stop till to-morrow and refit!" Sanda protested in

horror.

"I've changed my mind. We don't need to refit. In five hours we shall be

on the march."

"No!" cried Sanda. "You want to kill my only friend, but you shall not.

You know that rest is his one chance, and you'd take it away. I won't

have it so. He stays here, and I stay with him."

"Stay and be damned," Stanton bawled.

The men sitting by the distant fire heard the angry roar, and some

jumped to their feet, expecting an alarm.

"Stay and be damned, and may the vultures pick the flesh off your

lover's bones, while the sheikh takes you to his harem. He's welcome to

you," Stanton finished.

Before the words were out Max leaped at the Chief's throat. All the

advantage of youth was his, against the other's bulk; but as he sprang

Ahmara bounded on him from behind, winding her arms around his body and

throwing on him all her weight. It made him stagger, and, snatching up

the heavy campstool on which he had been sitting, Stanton struck Max

with it on the head. Weakened already by the anguish in the torn nerves

of his hand (most painful centre for a wound in all the body), Max fell

like a log, and lay unconscious while Ahmara wriggled herself free.

"He asked for that, and now he's got it," said Stanton, panting. "Serve

him right, and nobody will blame me if he's dead. But he isn't, no fear!

Fellows like him belong to the leopard tribe, and have as many lives as

a cat. Good girl, Ahmara, many thanks."

And without another glance toward Max, beside whom Sanda was on her

knees, Stanton threw the campstool into the tent and yelled to the men

by the fire. He called the names of two who were his special servants,

but most of the band followed, knowing from the roar of rage and the one

sharp cry in a woman's voice that something important had happened.

Stanton was glad when he saw the dark crowd troop toward him, though in

his first flush of excitement he had not thought to summon every one.

"Come on, all of you!" he shouted. "Now halt! You see the man lying

there--at my feet, where he belongs. He was my trusted lieutenant, but

he took too much upon himself. I knocked him down for insubordination.

He doesn't go farther with the caravan. And we start in five hours. Zaid

and Mahmoud, put this carrion out of my sight. I've shown you all what

happens when black or white men disobey my orders."

No one came forward. From her knees beside Max Sanda rose up slim and

straight and stood facing the Arabs and negroes.

"Men," she cried to them, "I've done my best for you. I've defended you,

when I could, from injustice. When you have been sick with fevers or

with wounds I have nursed you. Now my father's friend, and my friend,

who to-night has saved my life, lies wounded. If you leave him, you

leave me, too, for I stay as his nurse. What do you decide?"

Stanton was on her in two strides. Seizing her arm he twisted it with a

savage wrench and flung her tottering behind him. The pain forced a cry

from the girl, and Ahmara laughed. That was more than the men could

stand, for to them Sanda was always the White Angel, Ahmara the Black;

and over there by the fire they had discussed a deputation to Stanton,

announcing that, since starting, they had heard too much evil of the

haunted Libyan desert to dare venture across its waterless wastes. The

spirit of mutiny was in them, having smouldered and flashed up,

smouldered and flamed again at Stanton's cruelty. This was too much! The

spark was fired. A Senegalese whom Sanda had cured of a scorpion bite--a

black giant to whom Max had lent his camel when Stanton would have left

him in the desert--leaped like a tiger on the Chief. Steel flashed under

the moon, and Stanton fell back without a groan, striking the hard sand

and staining it red.

For an instant there was silence. Then burst forth a wild shout of hate

and joy....

CHAPTER XXIX

OUT OF THE DREAM, A PLAN

Stanton was dead, hacked in pieces by the men he had cursed and beaten.

Ahmara had fled to Dardaï to live as she could by her beauty; and the

murderers, taking with them, in a rage of haste and terror, camels,

water, and provisions, had disappeared. The caravan of the great

explorer had vanished like a mirage; and the Lost Oasis lay hidden

forever from despoiling eyes and hands in the uncharted Libyan desert.

At dawn Sanda sat beside Max in his tent, where two of the few men who

remained had carried him. Through the hideous hours he had lain as one

dead. But light, touching his eyelids, waked him with a shuddering

start.

"You!" he whispered. "Safe! I've had horrible dreams."

"Only dreams," she soothed him.

"How pale you are!" He stared at her, still half dazed.

"Perhaps it's the light."

"No, it's not the light. I remember now.... What happened after

he--I----"

"I'll tell you when you're stronger."

"I'm strong enough for anything. Only a little odd in my head."

"And your poor wounded hand? I bathed it and bandaged it again, and you

never knew."

"Queer! I thought if I were dead I should have known if you touched me!"

He spoke more to himself than to Sanda, and she did not answer. His

eyelids drooped, and presently he slept again. Hours later, when he

woke, she was still there. It seemed to the girl that the world had

fallen to pieces, leaving only her and this man in the ruins. All around

them lay the vast desert. To go back whence they had come was

impossible. To go on seemed equally impossible. There was nowhere to go.

But they were together. She knew that nothing could part them now, not

life, and even less death, yet she could see no future. Everything had

come to a standstill, and their souls might as well be out of their

bodies. It would be so much simpler!

She gave Max tea that she had made; and when she had looked at his hand

and bandaged it again, she told him all that had happened. How the

Senegalese, whose brother Stanton had shot for pilfering, a month ago,

had stabbed Stanton in the breast, and fifty others in blood-madness had

rushed to finish his work. How Ahmara had run shrieking to the village,

and the men, still in madness, had stolen the camels and gone off into

the desert; not the murderers only, but their friends who saw that it

was well to disappear, that it might never be known who were the men

that saw Richard Stanton die.

Two months and more ago, when the caravan left Touggourt, there were

over a hundred men who marched with it. Between that time and reaching

Dardaï thirty had deserted, and a few had died. Now all had flown

except a dozen of the oldest and most responsible who refused to be

carried away by their comrades' vague fear of reprisals. Just these

twelve were left with fifteen camels and a small store of arms and

provisions. There was money also, untouched in Stanton's tent, and some

bales of European rugs, clocks, and musical boxes, which the explorer

had brought as gifts for native rulers. The question pressed: what was

to be done? Sanda could find no answer; but Max had two. They might turn

back and go the way they had come. Or they might go on, not trying to

cross the Libyan desert in the direction of Assouan, as Stanton had

hoped to do, but skirting southward by a longer route where the desert

was charted and oases existed. After a journey of seventy or eighty days

they might hope to find their way through Kordofan to Omdurman, and then

across the Nile to civilized Khartoum. It was this idea that the leading

mutineers, frightened by tales of the terrible Libyan desert, had meant

to suggest to Stanton; and if he refused their intention had been to

desert. The murder, Max felt sure, had not been premeditated; but he did

not believe that it was regretted.

"I will not go back to Touggourt," Sanda said, when he had described to

her the two plans.

"Why? Because you are thinking of me?" he asked.

"Partly that. But it would be as bad for me as for you, now, if you were

to be arrested as a deserter. And besides," Sanda went on hurriedly,

determined to show him it was for her sake more than his that she

objected, "I've suffered so much I couldn't go again along that Via

Dolorosa. I want to get away from the very thought of it. New scenes

will be better. How many miles must we journey to Omdurman and

Khartoum?"

"Nearly a thousand," Max confessed.

"More than we've come with our great caravan! It's not possible."

"It must be possible!" said Max. "We'll make it possible."

"Surely such a thing has never been done!"

"Maybe not, but we'll do it. I feel now that I have the strength of a

hundred men in myself."

"You haven't even the strength of one. We must stay here till you are

stronger." Yet she shivered and grew cold at the thought of staying on,

even with Max, close to the grave the men had dug for Stanton in the

sand.

"I shall be better travelling," Max urged. He would not tell Sanda, but

he felt it unsafe to stay long near Dardaï with so few men. The sheikh

had been hospitable to Stanton, but things were different now. Ahmara

would tell about the money and the boxes and bales full of presents. The

temptation virtuously to punish those who were left, for the fate of the

explorer, would be too great, and the excuse too good.

"We shall have to get off after the heat of the day," Max insisted.

"I've lain here long enough, for, you see, I must be leader now for you.

I must talk to the men and tell them what we've decided."

"How _little_ we are in this great desert, to talk of 'deciding,'" the

girl exclaimed. "It is the desert that will decide. But--you will be

with me always ... as in my dream!"

"And mine," Max added.

Then followed day upon day of the desert dream. Some days were evil and

some were good, but none could ever be forgotten. The man and the girl

whose dreams had come true never spoke of the future, though waking or

sleeping the thought was seldom out of their minds.

"I _can't_ give her up now, whatever happens," Max said to himself

sometimes. Yet he did not see how he should be able, in justice to the

girl, to keep her. In British territory he would be safe from arrest as

a deserter from the Legion. But the very thought of himself as a

deserter was torture from which he could never escape. He regretted

nothing. What he had done he would do again if he had it to do, even in

ignorance of the reward--her love. But he remembered how he had tried to

puzzle out some other way for Valdez, and how impossible it would have

seemed then, that he should ever follow Manöel's example. He loved

Colonel DeLisle and he had loved the Legion with all its tragedies, and

been proud of his place in it. He looked upon himself as a man

disgraced, and did not see how he should ever be able to make a position

in the world worthy to be shared by Sanda. Besides, it would be

disastrous for Colonel DeLisle, as an official, if his daughter should

marry a deserter. That was one of the things that "would not do." Yet

Sanda loved the deserter, and fate had bound them together. The spirit

of the desert was making them one. Max did not know that out of Sanda's

dreams had been born a plan.

CHAPTER XXX

THE PLAY OF CROSS PURPOSES

When Max St. George, with seven emaciated Arabs and five dilapidated

camels, crawled into Omdurman, bringing Richard Stanton's young widow,

their arrival made a sensation for all Egypt. Later, in Khartoum, when

the history of the murder and the subsequent march of nine hundred miles

came out, it became a sensation for Europe and America.

Rumours had run ahead of the little party, from Kordofan, birthland of

the terrible Mahdi; but the whole story was patched together from

disjointed bits only, when the caravan arrived in civilization. Very

little was got out of the fever-stricken, haggard young man who

(according to Mrs. Stanton) was the hero of the great adventure,

impossible to have been carried through for a single day without him. It

was Sanda who told the tale, told it voluntarily, even eagerly, to every

one who questioned her. She could not give Max St. George--that

mysterious young man who apparently had no country and no past--enough

praise to satisfy her gratitude. There had been terrible sandstorms in

which they would have given themselves up for lost if it had not been

for his energy and courage. Once they had strayed a long way off their

track and nearly starved and died of thirst before they could find an

oasis they had aimed for and renew exhausted supplies. But Max St.

George's spirit had never flagged even after the mosquito-ridden swamp

where he had caught a touch of malarial fever. Through his presence of

mind and military skill the party had been saved from extinction in a

surprise attack by a band of desert marauders twice their number. Every

night he had protected the little camp by forming round it a hollow

square of camels and baggage, and keeping a sentinel posted, generally

himself. It was through these precautions they had been able to

withstand the surprise and drive the robbers off with the loss only of a

few men and some of the camels. They had fought and conquered the enemy

under a flag of the Legion, a miniature copy given by Colonel DeLisle to

his daughter. There had not been one desertion from their ranks, except

by death, and all was owing--Sanda said--to the spirit Max St. George

had infused into his followers. He insisted that the latter were the

only heroes, if any, and the Arabs from far-off Touggourt enjoyed such

fame as they had associated with the delights of a paradise reserved for

warriors. But of himself Max St. George would not talk; and people said

to each other, "Who is this young fellow who was the only white man with

Stanton? He seems at home in every language. Where did he come from?"

Nobody could tell. Not a soul knew what his past had been. But as for

his future, it seemed not unlikely that it might be limited on this

earth; for having finished his mission, and taken Mrs. Stanton as far as

Cairo on her way back to Algeria, he succumbed to the fever he had

resisted ferociously while his services were needed. When there was

nothing to do he relaxed a little and the flame in his blood burned

unchecked.

Mrs. Stanton's exhibition of gratitude, however, was admirable in the

eyes of the world focussed upon her. If Richard Stanton had not been a

magnificent man, celebrated for his successes with women, and having the

added attraction of fame as an explorer, people might have suggested

that the widow's remaining in Cairo to nurse St. George was not entirely

disinterested. But as it was, nobody said disagreeable things about the

beautiful, pale young creature, and the haggard skeleton of a man who

had pioneered her safely through the Sahara and Libyan deserts.

It was as much because of her beauty, which gave a glamour of almost

classic romance to the wild business, as because of Stanton's reputation

and the amazing madness of his last venture, that newspapers all over

the civilized world gave columns to the story. Somehow, snapshots of Max

St. George, as well as several of Sanda, had been snatched by

enterprising journalists before St. George fell ill in Cairo. These were

telegraphed for and bought by newspapers of England, Spain, Italy,

France, America, Algeria, and even Germany, which had not loved Stanton.

The next thing that happened was the report in Algerian papers that Max

St. George, "_le jeune homme de mystère_," was a missing soldier of the

Legion, who had deserted from an important mission to join Stanton's

caravan. Sensation everywhere! Paragraphs reminding the public of a

curious fact: that young Mrs. Stanton was the daughter of the colonel of

the Legion. Strange if she had not known from the first that the recruit

to her husband's expedition was a deserter from her father's regiment.

And what a situation for the colonel himself! His daughter protected

during a long desert journey of incalculable peril by a man whom it

would be her father's duty to have arrested and court-martialled if he

were on French soil.

Journalists argued the delicate question, whether, in the circumstances,

it would be possible for Colonel DeLisle to do anything officially

toward obtaining a pardon for St. George--whose name probably was not

St. George, since no man wore anything so obvious as his own name in the

Foreign Legion. Retired officers wrote letters to the papers and pointed

out that for DeLisle to work in St. George's favour, simply because

accident had enabled the deserter to aid a member of his colonel's

family, would be inadmissible. If St. George were the right sort of man

and soldier he would not expect or wish it. As a matter of fact, he did

neither; but then, at the time, he was in a physical state which

precluded conscious wishes and expectations. He did not know or care

what happened; though sometimes, in intervals of seeing marvellous

mirages of the Lost Oasis, and fighting robbers, or prescribing for sick

camels, he appeared vaguely to recognize the face of his nurse; not the

professional, but the amateur. "Sanda, Sanda!" he would mutter, or cry

out aloud; but as fortunately no one knew that Mrs. Stanton, _née_

Corisande DeLisle, was called "Sanda" by those who loved her, the doctor

and the professional nurse supposed he was babbling about the sand of

the desert. He had certainly had a distressing amount of it!

Max would have been immensely interested if he could have known at this

time of three persons in different parts of the world who were working

for him in different ways. There was Manöel Valdez in Rome, where he had

arrived with Ourïeda by way of Tunis and Sicily, instead of getting to

Spain according to his earlier plan. Manöel, singing with magnificent

success in grand opera, proclaimed himself Juan Garcia, a

fellow-deserter with St. George, in order to gild St. George's escapade

with glory. Not only did he talk to every one, and permit his

fascinating Spanish-Arab bride to talk, but he let himself be

interviewed by newspapers. Perhaps all this was a good advertisement in

a way; but he was making a _succes fou_, and did not need advertisement.

Genuinely and sincerely he was baring his heart and bringing his wife

into the garish limelight because of his passionate gratitude to Max St.

George.

The interview was copied everywhere, and Sanda read it in Cairo,

learning for the first time not only many generous acts of St. George of

which she had never heard, but gathering details of Ourïeda's escape

with Valdez, at which till then she had merely been able to guess. The

entire plot of Manöel's love drama, from the first grim scene of

stunning the prospective bridegroom on the way to his unwilling bride,

to the escape from the _douar_ in the quiet hours when Tahar was

supposed to be left alone with the "Agha's Rose," on to the hiding at

Djazerta, and stealing away in disguise with a caravan while the hunt

took another direction, all had played itself out according to his plan.

Valdez attributed the whole success to St. George's help, advice, and

gifts of money, down to the last franc in his possession. And now Manöel

began to pay the debt he owed, by calling on the world's sympathy for

the deserter, who might not set foot on French soil without being

arrested. Thus the singer's golden voice was raised for Max in Italy. In

Algeria old "Four Eyes" was working for him like the demon that he

looked; having returned with his colonel and comrades to Sidi-bel-Abbés

after the long march and a satisfactory fight with the "Deliverer," he

soon received news of the lost one. With roars of derision he refused to

believe in the little "corporal's" voluntary desertion, and from the

first moment began to agitate. What! punish a hero for his heroism?

That, in Four Eyes' vilely profane opinion, expressed with elaborate

expletives in the Legion's own choicest vernacular, was what it would

amount to if St. George were branded "deserter." Precisely why Max had

joined Stanton's caravan instead of returning to Sidi-bel-Abbés, perhaps

a few days late, Four Eyes was not certain; but there was no one better

instructed than he in pretending to know things he merely conjectured.

He had seen Ahmara, the dancer, and had told Max the scandal connecting

her with the explorer. "What more natural than that a soldier of the

Legion should, for his colonel's sake, sacrifice his whole career to

protect the daughter from such a husband as Stanton? No doubt the boy

knew that Stanton meant to take Ahmara with him, and had left everything

to stand between the girl and such a pair."

In his own picturesque and lurid language Four Eyes presented these

conjectures of his as if they were facts; and to do him justice he

believed in them. Also, he took pains to rake up every old tale of

cruelty, vanity, or lust that had been told in the past about Richard

Stanton, and embroider them. Beside the satyr figure which he flaunted

like a dummy Guy Fawkes, Max St. George shone a pure young martyr. Never

had old Four Eyes enjoyed such popularity among the townfolk of

Sidi-bel-Abbés as in these days, and he had the satisfaction of seeing

veiled allusions to his anecdotes in newspapers when he could afford to

buy or was able to steal them. On the strength of his triumph he got up

among his fellow Legionnaires a petition for the pardon and

reinstatement of Corporal St. George. Not a man refused to sign, for

even those who might have hesitated would not have done so long under

the basilisk stare of the ex-champion of boxing.

"Sign, or I'll smash you to a jelly," was his remark to one recruit who

had not heard enough of St. George or Four Eyes to dash his name on

paper the instant he saw a pen.

While the petition was growing Colonel DeLisle (who gave no sign that he

had heard of it) obtained ten days' leave, the first he had asked for in

many years, and took ship for Algiers to Alexandria to see his daughter.

But that did not discourage Four Eyes; on the contrary, "The Old Man

doesn't want to be in it, see?" said Pelle. "It ain't for him, in the

circus, to do the trick; it's for us, _ses enfants!_ And damn all four

of my eyes, we'll _do_ it, if we have to mutiny as our comrades once did

before us, when they made big history in the Legion."

The third person who, unasked, took an active interest in Max St.

George's affairs was, of all people on earth, the last whom he or any

one else would have expected to meddle with them. This was Billie

Brookton, married to her Chicago millionaire, and trying, tooth and

nail, with the aid of his money, to break into the inner fastnesses of

New York and Newport's Four Hundred. It was all because of a certain

resistance to her efforts that suddenly, out of revenge and not through

love, she took up Max's cause. The powder train was--unwittingly--laid

months before by Josephine Doran-Reeves, as she preferred to call

herself after her marriage with the son of the Dorans' lawyer. Neither

she nor Grant--who had taken the name of Doran-Reeves also--liked to

think or talk of the man who had disappeared. On consideration, the

Reeveses, father and son, had decided not to make public the story of

Josephine's birth which Max had given to them. They feared that his

great sacrifice would create too much sympathy for Max and rouse

indignation against Josephine and her husband for accepting it, allowing

the martyr to disappear, penniless, into space. At first they said

nothing at all about him, merely giving out that Josephine Doran was a

distant relative who had been brought to the Doran house on Rose's

death; but all sorts of inconvenient questions began to be asked about

Max Doran, into whose house and fortune the strange-looking,

half-beautiful, half-terrible, red-haired girl had suddenly,

inexplicably stepped.

Max's friends in society and the army did not let him pass into oblivion

without a word; therefore some sort of story had to eventually be told

to silence tongues, and, still worse, newspapers. Grant was singularly

good at making up stories, and always had been since, as a boy, he had

unobtrusively contrived to throw blame off his own shoulders on to those

of Max if they were in a scrape together.

Half a lie, nicely mixed with a few truths, makes a concoction that the

public swallows readily. Max was too young, and had been too much away

from New York, to be greatly missed there, despite Rose Doran's

popularity; and when such an interesting and handsome couple as Grant

and Josephine Doran-Reeves began entertaining gorgeously in the

renovated Doran house, the ex-lieutenant of cavalry was forgotten

comparatively soon. It seemed, according to reluctant admissions made at

last by Grant and Josephine to their acquaintances, that Max had had

secret reasons for resigning his commission in the army and vanishing

into space. It was his own wish to give up the old house to Josephine,

his "distant cousin from France," and in saying this they carefully gave

the impression that he had been well paid. Nobody dreamed that the money

Mr. and Mrs. Grant Doran-Reeves spent in such charming ways had once

belonged to Max. He was supposed to have "come a cropper" somehow, as so

many young men did, and to have disappeared with everything he had, out

of the country, for his country's good. When people realized that there

was a secret, perhaps a disgraceful one, many were sorry for poor Grant

and Josephine, mixed up in it through no fault of their own; and the

name of Max Doran was dropped from conversation whenever his innocent

relatives were within hearing distance. Then, by and by, it was

practically dropped altogether, because it had passed out of

recollection.

This was the state of affairs when the beautiful Billie (Mrs. Jeff

Houston) arrived, covered with diamonds and pearls (the best of the

latter were Max's), to storm social New York. She had already won its

heart as an actress, but as a respectable married woman who had left

the stage and connected herself by marriage with a sausage-maker she was

a different "proposition."

"You ought to know some woman in the smart set," advised a friend in the

half-smart set who had received favours from Billie, and had not been

able to give the right sort of return. "Oh, of course, you do know a lot

of the men, but they're worse than no use to you now. It must be a

woman, 'way high up at the top.'"

Billie racked her brains, and thought of Josephine Doran-Reeves.

Josephine was "way up at the top," because she was a Doran and very

rich, and so queer that she amused the most bored people, whether she

meant to or not. Unfortunately, Billie did not know her, but the next

best thing, surely, was to have known Max Doran.

Billie had made capital out of Max in the shape of a famous blue diamond

and a string of uniquely fine pearls, and her idea had been that she had

got all there was to be got from him. In fact, she had not mentioned

this little love-idyll even to her husband. Suddenly, however, she

remembered that they two had been dear, dear friends--perfectly platonic

friends, of course--and she felt justified in writing a sweet letter to

Josephine asking tactfully for news of Max. She put her point

charmingly, and begged that she might be allowed to call on dear Mrs.

Doran-Reeves, to chat cozily about "that darling boy," or would Mrs.

Doran-Reeves rather come and have tea with her one day, any day, at the

Plaza Hotel? She was staying there until the house her husband had

bought for her (quite near the Doran house) should be out of the

decorator's hands.

But the last thing that appealed to Josephine was the thought of a cozy

chat about "that darling boy" Max. Besides, the moment was a bad one

with her. Captain de la Tour had got long leave and come to America, she

did not know why at first, and had been inclined to feel rather

flattered, if slightly frightened. But soon she found out. He had come

to blackmail her. There were some silly letters she had written when

they were in the thick of their flirtation at Sidi-bel-Abbés, and the

height of her ambition had been to marry a French officer, no matter how

poor. Captain de la Tour had kept those letters.

He did not threaten to show them to Grant Doran-Reeves. He judged the

other man by himself and realized that, having married a girl for her

money, Grant would not throw her over, or even hurt her feelings, while

she still had it.

What Captain de la Tour proposed was to sell the letters and tell the

romantic story of Mrs. Doran-Reeves's life in a little Algerian hotel if

she did not buy up the whole secret and his estates in France at the

same time. For the two together he asked only the ridiculously small

price of three hundred thousand francs--sixty thousand dollars.

Josephine had raged, for Grant, even more than she, hated to spend money

where a show could not be made with it. But Captain de la Tour was

rather insistent and got on her nerves. In an hysterical fit, therefore,

she made a clean breast of the story to her husband. When she had

described to him as well as she could what was in the letters, and what

a Bohemian sort of life she had led in Bel-Abbés, Grant decided that it

would be romantic as well as sensible to buy the Château de la Tour.

Josephine had actually been born there; and they could either keep the

place or sell it when it had been improved a bit and made famous by a

few choice house-parties.

So the Doran-Reeveses bought the château and got back the letters, and

hoped that Captain de la Tour would take himself and his ill-gotten

gains out of the United States. But he lingered, looking out for an

American heiress, while Josephine existed in a state of constant

irritation, fearing some new demand or an indiscretion. And it was just

at this time that she received Mrs. Jeff Houston's letter. Naturally it

gave her great pleasure to snub some one, especially a woman prettier

than herself. She took no notice of Billie's appeal, and when Mrs.

Houston, hoping somehow that it had not reached its destination, spoke

to her sweetly one night at the opera, Josephine was rude before some of

the "best people" in New York.

After that, Billie said to every one that Mrs. Doran-Reeves was insane

as well as deformed; but that "cut no ice," as Jeff Houston remarked,

and when the snapshot of Max St. George, deserter from the Foreign

Legion, appeared with the newspaper story of Sanda Stanton, Billie did

what Jeff described as "falling over herself" to get to the office of

_Town Tales_.

She told nothing damaging to the late Miss Brookton in mentioning Max

Doran, and of him she spoke with friendly enthusiasm. He had been _so_

good, so kind to her, and so different from many young men who were good

to actresses. It broke her heart to think of his fate, for there was no

doubt that Max St. George, the Legionnaire, and Max Doran were one.

Billie told how, to her certain knowledge, Max had sacrificed himself

for Josephine Doran, who (for some reason he was too noble to reveal,

but it had to do with a secret of ancestry) seemed to him the rightful

heiress.

Penniless, Max had been forced to resign from an expensive regiment,

where he lived expensively. He had done this for Josephine's sake,

though he had loved his career better than anything else in the world.

And then, last of all, he had effaced himself rather than accept pity or

favours. He had enlisted in the Foreign Legion, and now he had further

shown the nobility of his nature by the very way in which he had fallen

into disgrace. But what did the Doran-Reeveses do, though they owed

everything to him? They told lies and ignored his existence. Mrs. Jeff

Houston said that she felt it her duty as Max Doran's only faithful

friend to bring this injustice to public notice.

_Town Tales_ was delighted to help her do this, because she was Billie

Brookton, a celebrity, and because it was "good copy." Other

papers--many other papers--took up the hue and cry which _Town Tales_

started; and the Doran-Reeveses' life became not as agreeable as it had

been.

They defended themselves to friends and enemies and newspaper men, and

thought of suing _Town Tales_ for libel, but were dissuaded from doing

so by old Mr. Reeves. Then it occurred to Josephine to let every one

know that, though she was being cruelly maligned, she wished, as a proof

of her admiration for Max's desert exploits, to present him with all her

French property, the magnificent old vineyard-surrounded Château de la

Tour, where he could cultivate grapes and make his fortune.

The papers pointed out that this was something like sending coals to

Newcastle, as St. George, alias Doran, was debarred from entering France

unless he wanted to go to prison. But Josephine and Grant quickly

retorted that the recipient of their bounty need not live in France in

order to benefit. He could sell or let the Château de la Tour through

some agent.

Not an echo of all this play of cross purposes reached Max at the

nursing home in Cairo, where he had been carried by Sanda's orders after

breaking down. But Sanda, who took in a dozen papers to see what they

had to say about the "deserter," read what was going on at New York as

well as in Rome and at Sidi-bel-Abbés. She saw that Max had been

presented with estates in France by the woman who had taken everything

and given nothing; and because of queer things Max had let drop in his

delirium she understood more of the past than he would have revealed of

his own free will. For one thing, she learnt that a certain Jack and

Rose Doran had had a child born to them at the Château de la Tour. This

enabled her to put other things together in her mind, and loving Max as

she did, she saw no harm in thus using her wits, while she respected him

with all her heart for not telling the secret. Besides, she had met

Captain de la Tour in Sidi-bel-Abbés, and she had guessed that it was

partly because of him and one or two others like him that her father had

sent her to the Agha's rather than leave her at Bel-Abbés alone.

"It would be the most wonderful sort of poetic justice," she reflected,

sitting at Max's bedside one day while he slept, "if the old place of

his ancestors should come back to him at last."

This thought reminded her of her plan. Not that she ever forgot it; but

she had to put it into the background of her mind until she was sure

that Max was going to get well. Until then, she could not and would not

leave him. But at last she was sure; and she was waiting only to find

out if her father could help; or if not, till his leave was over and she

was left to act for herself without compromising the Legion's colonel.

If Sanda had loved her father in their days together at Bel-Abbés, she

loved him a thousand times more in those few days of his visit at Cairo.

He forgave her without being asked for leaving him "in the lurch," as

she repentantly called it, and letting herself be carried away by

Stanton. "You thought you loved him, my darling," DeLisle said. "And I

could forgive anything to love."

It was in his arms, with her face buried on his breast, that she told

what her marriage had been, and then came the confession (for it seemed

to her a confession, though she was not ashamed of it, but proud) about

Max.

"He didn't speak one word of love to me," the girl said. "He tried not

even to let his eyes speak. But they did, sometimes, in spite of him.

And no man could possibly endure or do for a woman the things he endured

and did for me, every one of those terrible days, if he didn't love her.

So when I was afraid he might die from the viper's bite, I wanted him to

have one happy moment in this world to remember in the next. I told him

that I cared, and he kissed my hand and looked at me. That's all,

except just a word or two that I keep too sacredly to tell even you. And

afterward when Richard was dead, and Max and I were alone in the desert,

save for a few Arabs, he never again referred to that night, or spoke of

our love. I was sure it was only because we were alone and I depended on

him. But after those weeks and months of facing death together, it seems

that we belong to each other, he and I. Nothing must part us--nothing."

She was half afraid her father might remind her of the situation which

had arisen between Max as a deserter and himself as colonel of the

regiment from which Max had deserted.

But Colonel DeLisle did not say this or anything like it. He knew that

love was the greatest thing in the world for his daughter, as it had

been for him, and he could not cheat her out of it. He was sad because

it seemed to him that in honour he could do nothing for this deserter

who had done everything for him--nothing, that is, save give him his

daughter, and abandon what remained of his own career by resigning his

commission. As colonel of the Legion, his child could not be allowed to

marry a deserter, a fugitive who dare not enter France. As for him,

DeLisle, though the Legion was much to him, Sanda was more. But she said

she and Max would not take happiness at that price. They must think of

some other way. And the other way was the plan.

When the colonel returned to Algeria and his regiment Max had not yet

gained enough strength to be seen and thanked for what he had done, even

if DeLisle had found it compatible with his official duty to say to a

deserter what was in his heart to say to Sanda's hero. And perhaps,

Sanda thought, it was as well that they did not meet just then.

Irrevocable things might have been spoken between them.

The day after her father's ship sailed for Algiers she took another that

went from Port Said to Marseilles. From Marseilles she travelled to

Paris, which was familiar ground to her. What she did there gave a new

fillip to the Stanton-DeLisle-St. George sensation, though at the same

time it put an extinguisher on all discussions: a blow to those retired

officers who liked writing to the papers.

Lest what the papers said should be prematurely seen by the

convalescent's eyes, however, Sanda hurried back to Egypt.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE GIFT

Max was sitting up in a reclining chair, for the first time, on the day

of Sanda's return to Cairo.

He knew that she had gone to France on business of some sort, but he had

no idea what it was. It did not occur to him that it might have to do

with his affairs. Probably (he thought) it was connected with Stanton,

who had left money, and who had "geographical investments," as he called

them, all over the world, in France, perhaps, among other places. But

somehow Max could not imagine Sanda accepting money for herself that

came from Stanton, even if it were legally hers.

Although Max was still weak, he had begun to think urgently,

insistently, about the future. All the objections that Colonel DeLisle

could see to the marriage of Sanda Stanton with the deserter St. George,

the deserter St. George saw, and many more. It was caddish to think of

marrying her, and monstrous to think of giving her up. His anxious

thoughts toiled round and round in a vicious circle whence there seemed

no way out.

In the morning the doctor came in and laid down on the table, with his

hat, gloves, and stick, a newspaper. As he examined his patient, the

nurse picked up the journal and began to glance quickly from column to

column in order to have absorbed the news by the time the doctor wanted

her services--or his paper. Suddenly, not being possessed of great

self-control except in professional emergencies, she gave vent to a

shrill little squeak of excitement.

Max and the doctor both turned their heads; and when the latter saw his

newspaper open in the young woman's hand, he guessed instantly what had

excited her. He anathematized himself for putting the paper where she

could get at it; for without doubt Mrs. Stanton would want to tell the

great news herself. She must not be defrauded of the pleasure, for she

would certainly make a point of getting back for a "look at the patient"

to-day or to-morrow. If to-day, she might appear at any minute, for a P.

& O. boat-train had arrived at Cairo late the night before, Doctor

Taylor had heard, and it was now nine-thirty in the morning--not too

early to expect her.

Nurse Yorke must not blurt out the tidings in her common way! But how to

stop her without arousing St. George's curiosity?

"Oh, I suppose you've got hold of the advertisement of that sale I told

you of," he said, glaring over the top of Max's head.

"Why! I've found----" the nurse began briskly, but withered under Doctor

Taylor's forbidding gaze.

"I knew nothing else could have excited you so much," he went on

masterfully, still hypnotizing her with his eyes, until even a duller

woman would have grasped his meaning. But maybe he wanted to read out

the news himself? Nurse Yorke handed him the paper.

"Perhaps Mr. St. George will be interested in the advertisement of this

sale," she suggested, with a coy emphasis which made Doctor Taylor want

to smother the well-meaning creature with a pillow.

"We'll let Mrs. Stanton read it to him when she comes," he said

waspishly; and at that moment Mrs. Stanton came.

They both knew her knock, and Nurse Yorke flew to open the door.

She had a smile and a word for them, and then went straight to Max. "How

splendid! You're sitting up," she said. "This is worth travelling fast

for, if there were nothing else. But there is. There's something next

best to your getting well." Then she caught sight of the open paper in

the nurse's hand. "Have you--has any one been telling you--or reading

you to-day's news?" she asked, breathless.

"Nurse Yorke was just beginning to read something about a sale, I

think," Max answered, hardly knowing what he said because his eyes were

upon her--this girl of girls, this pearl of pearls, whom honour was

forcing him to give up, and at the same time bidding him to keep. He

thought that he had never seen her so lovely as to-day, in the simple

travelling dress and hat all of black, yet not mourning. There was a

look of heaven in her eyes, and they seemed to say that this heaven was

for him. Could he refuse it? He gave her back look for look; and neither

he nor she knew what they said when Doctor Taylor invited Nurse Yorke to

go with him into the next room and examine the chart.

"Are you glad I'm back?" Sanda asked, drawing a chair close up to the

_chaise longue_.

"Glad? You're worth all the doctor's medicines and tonics. I'm well

now!"

"Aren't you dying to hear my news?"

"It's such wonderful news that you've come, I can't think of anything

else," Max assured her, gazing at her hair, her eyes, her mouth--her

sweet, sweet mouth.

"All the same I'm going to tell you," Sanda insisted, panting a little

over her heartbeats. "My news is not about a 'sale,' it's about a

_gift_. Yet I think it's the very same news Nurse Yorke almost read you.

Oh, I should have been thwarted, cheated, if she had! This is for _me_

to tell you, my Soldier, me, and no one else, for the gift is to me, for

you. The President of the French Republic has given it to me for Max St.

George of the Tenth Company, First Regiment of the Legion; Max St.

George, owner of the Château de la Tour, home of his far-off

ancestors--where he and his Sanda will go some day together when he's

tired of soldiering--and Sanda's father, Max's grateful colonel, will

visit them. And that wonderful old Four Eyes, who has almost worked the

Legion into a mutiny for the Soldier's sake, will live with them, if he

can ever bear to leave the Legion. Now, can't you guess what the

President's gift is?"

"Not--not pardon?" Max's lips formed the words which he could not speak

aloud. But it was as if Sanda heard.

"Pardon, and a lieutenant's commission in the Legion."

"Sanda!"

All the worship of a man's heart and soul were in that name as it broke

from him with a sob.

"My Soldier!" she answered, in his arms. And then they spoke no more;

for again they were living through in that minute all the long months of

agony and bliss in the desert, when their dream had been coming true.

* * * * *

Four months later Max left his bride to go with a French, English, and

Russian contingent of the Legion to fight with the Allies in France, in

the War of the World.

Sanda waits, and prays--and hopes.

THE END

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N.Y.