"A month! Thirty-one days! Oh, God! Only thirty-one days. It seems a
lifetime. Only a month since I left Biskra. A month! A month!"
Diana flung herself on to her face, burying her head deeply into the
cushions of the divan, shutting out from her sight the barbaric luxury
of her surroundings, shuddering convulsively. She did not cry. The
complete breakdown of the first night had never been repeated. Tears of
shame and anger had risen in her eyes often, but she would not let them
fall. She would not give her captor the satisfaction of knowing that he
could make her weep. Her pride was dying hard. Her mind travelled back
slowly over the days and nights of anguished revolt, the perpetual
clash of will against will, the enforced obedience that had made up
this month of horror. A month of experience of such bitterness that she
wondered dully how she still had the courage to rebel. For the first
time in her life she had had to obey. For the first time in her life
she was of no account. For the first time she had been made conscious
of the inferiority of her sex. The training of years had broken down
under the experience. The hypothetical status in which she had stood
with regard to Aubrey and his friends was not tolerated here, where
every moment she was made to feel acutely that she was a woman, forced
to submit to everything to which her womanhood exposed her, forced to
endure everything that he might put upon her--a chattel, a slave to do
his bidding, to bear his pleasure and his displeasure, shaken to the
very foundation of her being with the upheaval of her convictions and
the ruthless violence done to her cold, sexless temperament. The
humiliation of it seared her proud heart. He was pitiless in his
arrogance, pitiless in his Oriental disregard of the woman subjugated.
He was an Arab, to whom the feelings of a woman were non-existent. He
had taken her to please himself and he kept her to please himself, to
amuse him in his moments of relaxation.
To Diana before she had come to Africa the life of an Arab Sheik in his
native desert had been a very visionary affair. The term sheik itself
was elastic. She had been shown Sheiks in Biskra who drove hard
bargains to hire out mangy camels and sore-covered donkeys for trips
into the interior. Her own faithless caravan-leader had called himself
"Sheik." But she had heard also of other and different Sheiks who lived
far away across the shimmering sand, powerful chiefs with large
followings, who seemed more like the Arabs of her imaginings, and of
whose lives she had the haziest idea. When not engaged in killing their
neighbours she visualized them drowsing away whole days under the
influence of narcotics, lethargic with sensual indulgence. The pictures
she had seen had been mostly of fat old men sitting cross-legged in the
entrance of their tents, waited on by hordes of retainers, and looking
languidly, with an air of utter boredom, at some miserable slave being
beaten to death.
She had not been prepared for the ceaseless activity of the man whose
prisoner she was. His life was hard, strenuous and occupied. His days
were full, partly with the magnificent horses that he bred, and partly
with tribal affairs that took him from the camp for hours at a time.
Upon one or two occasions he had been away for the whole night and had
come back at daybreak with all the evidences of hard riding. Some days
she rode with him, but when he had not the time or the inclination, the
French valet went with her. A beautiful grey thoroughbred called Silver
Star was kept for her use, and sometimes on his back she was able to
forget for a little time. So the moments of relaxation were less
frequent than they might have been, and it was only in the evenings
when Gaston had come and gone for the last time and she was alone with
the Sheik that an icy hand seemed to close down over her heart. And,
according to his mood, he noticed or ignored her. He demanded implicit
obedience to his lightest whim with the unconscious tyranny of one who
had always been accustomed to command. He ruled his unruly followers
despotically, and it was obvious that while they loved him they feared
him equally. She had even seen Yusef, his lieutenant, cringe from the
heavy scowl that she had, herself, learned to dread.
"You treat them like dogs," she said to him once. "Are you not afraid
that one day they will rise against you and murder you?"
And he had only shrugged his shoulders and laughed, the same low laugh
of amusement that never failed to make her shiver.
The only person whose devotion seemed untinged by any conflicting
sentiment was the French valet, Gaston.
It was the Sheik's complete indifference to everything beyond his own
will, his Oriental egoism, that stung her most. He treated her
supplications and invectives with a like unconcern. The paroxysms of
wild rage that filled her periodically made no impression on him. He
accorded them a shrug of ennui or watched her with cold curiosity, his
lips parted in a little cruel smile, as if the dissection of her
lacerated feelings amused him, until his patience was exhausted, and
then, with one of the lithe, quick movements that she could never
evade, his hands would grip and hold her and he would look at her. Only
that, but in the grasp of his lean, brown fingers and under the stare
of his dark, fierce eyes her own would drop, and the frantic words die
from her lips. She was physically afraid of him, and she hated him and
loathed herself for the fear he inspired. And her fear was legitimate.
His strength was abnormal, and behind it was the lawlessness and
absolutism that allowed free rein to his savage impulses. He held life
and death in his hand.
A few days after he had taken her she had seen him chastise a servant.
She did not know what the man's fault had been, but the punishment
seemed out of all proportion to anything that could be imagined, and
she had watched fascinated with horror, until he had tossed away the
murderous whip, and without a second glance at the limp, blood-stained
heap that huddled on the ground with suggestive stillness had strolled
back unconcerned to the tent. The sight had sickened her and haunted
her perpetually. His callousness horrified her even more than his
cruelty. She hated him with all the strength of her proud, passionate
nature. His personal beauty even was an additional cause of offence.
She hated him the more for his handsome face and graceful, muscular
body. His only redeeming virtue in her eyes was his total lack of
vanity, which she grudgingly admitted. He was as unconscious of himself
as was the wild animal with which she compared him.
"He is like a tiger," she murmured deep into the cushions, with a
shiver, "a graceful, cruel, merciless beast." She remembered a tiger
she had shot the previous winter in India. After hours of weary,
cramped waiting in the machan the beautiful creature had slipped
noiselessly through the undergrowth and emerged into the clearing. He
had advanced midway towards the tree where she was perched and had
stopped to listen, and the long, free stride, the haughty poise of the
thrown-back head, the cruel curl of the lips and the glint in the
ferocious eyes flashing in the moonlight, were identical with the
expression and carriage of the man who was her master. Then it had been
admiration without fear, and she had hesitated at wantonly destroying
so perfect a thing, until the quick pressure of her shikari's fingers
on her arm brought her back to facts and reminded her that the "perfect
thing" was reported to have eaten a woman the previous week. And now it
was fear with a reluctant admiration that she despised herself for
according.
A hand on her shoulder made her start up with a cry. Usually her nerves
were in better control, but the thick rugs deadened every sound, and
she had not expected him so soon. He had been out since dawn and had
come in much past his usual time, and had been having a belated siesta
in the adjoining room.
Angry with herself she bit her lip and pushed the tumbled hair off her
forehead. He dropped on to the divan beside her and lit the inevitable
cigarette; he smoked continuously every moment he was not in the
saddle. She glanced at him covertly. He was lying with his head thrown
back against the cushions, idly blowing smoke-rings and watching them
drift towards the open door-way. And as she looked he yawned and turned
to her.
"Zilah is careless. Insist that she puts away your boots, and does not
leave your clothes lying on the floor. There was a scorpion in the
bathroom to-day," he said lazily, stretching out his long legs.
She flushed hotly, as she always did when he made any casual reference
to the intimacy of their life. It was his casualness that frightened
her, the carelessly implied continuance of a state that scorched her
with shame. His attitude invariably suggested a duration of their
relations that left her numb with a kind of helpless despair. He was so
sure of himself, so sure of his possession of her.
She felt the warm blood pouring over her face now, up to the roots of
her bright hair and dyeing her slender neck, and she put her hands up
to her head, her fingers thrust through her loose curls, to shield her
face from his eyes.
She gave a sigh of relief when Gaston came in bringing a little tray
with two filigree-cased cups of coffee.
"I have brought coffee; Madame's tea is finished," he murmured in tones
of deepest distress, and with a gesture that conveyed a national
calamity.
There had been just enough tea taken on the tour to last a month. It
was another pin-prick, another reminder. She set her teeth, moving her
head angrily, and found herself looking into a pair of mocking eyes,
and, as always, her own dropped.
Gaston said a few words in Arabic to his master, and the Sheik
swallowed the boiling coffee and went out hastily. The valet moved
about the tent with his usual deft noiselessness, gathering up
cigarette ends and spent matches, and tidying the room with an
assiduous orderliness that was peculiarly his own. Diana watched him
almost peevishly. Was it the influence of the desert that made all
these men cat-like in their movements, or was the servant consciously
or unconsciously copying his master? With a sudden fit of childish
irritability she longed to smash something, and, with an impetuous
hand, sent the little inlaid table with the tray and coffee-cups
flying. She was ashamed of the impulse even before the crash came, and
looked at Gaston clearing up the debris with anxious eyes. What was the
matter with her? The even temper on which she prided herself and the
nerves that had been her boast had vanished, gone by the board in the
last month. If her nerve failed her utterly what would become of her?
What would she do?
Gaston had gone, and she looked around the tent with a hunted
expression. There seemed no escape possible from the misery that was
almost more than she could bear.
There was a way out that had been in her mind often, and she had
searched frequently in the hope that she might find the means. But the
Sheik had also thought and had taken precautions. One day it seemed as
if her desperate wish might be fulfilled, and she had had only a
moment's hesitation as she stretched out her hand to take the revolver
that had been left lying on a table, but as her fingers closed on the
butt a muscular hand closed over hers. He had come in with his usual
silent step and was close to her without her knowing. He had taken the
weapon from her quietly, holding her eyes with his own, and had jerked
it open, showing the empty magazine. "Do you think that I am quite a
fool?" he had asked without a trace of expression in his voice.
And since then she had been under a ceaseless, unobtrusive surveillance
that had left her no chance of carrying out her terrible resolve. She
buried her face in her hands. "Oh, my God! Is it never going to end? Am
I never going to get away from him?"
She sprang to her feet and walked restlessly round the tent, her hands
clasped behind her back, her head thrown up, and her lips pressed close
together. She panted as if she had been running, and her eyes had a
far-away, unseeing look. Gradually she got command of herself again and
the nervous excitement died down, leaving her weary and very desolate.
The solitude seemed suddenly horrible. Anything would be better than
the silent emptiness of the great tent. A noise outside attracted her,
and she wandered to the doorway and out under the awning. Near her the
Sheik with Gaston and Yusef stood watching a mad, ramping colt that was
being held with difficulty by two or three men, who clung to him
tenaciously in spite of his efforts to break away, and beyond was a
semi-circle of Arabs, some mounted and some on foot, leaving a wide,
open space between them and the tent. They were intensely excited,
talking and gesticulating, the mounted men riding round the outer ring
that they formed. Diana leaned against one of the lances that supported
the awning and watched the scene with growing interest. This camp was
many miles to the south of the one to which she had first been brought,
and which had been broken up a few days after her capture. The setting
was wonderful, the far-off hills dusky in the afternoon light, the
clustering palms behind the tents, the crowd of barbaric figures in
picturesque, white robes, the horsemen moving continuously up and down,
and in the midst of everything the beautiful, wild creature, frenzied
by the noise, kicking and biting at the men holding him. After a moment
the Sheik held up his hand, and a man detached himself from the
chattering crowd and came to him salaaming. The Sheik said a few words,
and with another salaam and a gleam of white teeth, the man turned and
approached the struggling group in the centre of the ring.
Diana straightened up with interest. The frantic colt was going to be
broken. It was already saddled. Several additional men ran forward, and
between them the horse was forcibly held for a moment--only for a
moment, but it was long enough for the man who leaped like a flash on
to his back. The others fell away, racing from the reach of the
terrible lashing heels. Amazed for the moment at the sudden
unaccustomed weight, the colt paused, and then reared straight up, till
it seemed to Diana that he must fall backward and crush the man who was
clinging to him. But he came down at last, and for a few moments it was
almost impossible to follow his spasmodic movements as he strove to rid
himself of his rider. The end came quickly. With a twisting heave of
his whole body he shot the Arab over his head, who landed with a dull
thud and lay still, while the men who had been holding the colt dashed
in and secured him before he was aware of his liberty. Diana looked
towards the fallen man; a little crowd were gathered around him, and
her heart beat faster as she thought that he was dead. Dead so quickly,
and only a moment before he had been so full of life and strength.
Death meant nothing to these savages, she thought bitterly, as she
watched the limp body being carried away by three or four men, who
argued violently over their burden. She glanced at the Sheik. He seemed
perfectly unconcerned and did not even look in the direction of the man
who had fallen. On the contrary, he laughed, and, turning to Yusef, put
his hand en his shoulder and nodded towards the colt. Diana gave a
gasp. He spared no one. He was going to make the young man take his
chance as the rough-rider had taken his. She knew that the lieutenant
rode well, as did all Ahmed Ben Hassan's followers, and that his
languid manner was only a pose, but he looked so young and boyish, and
the risk seemed enormous. She had seen colts broken before many times,
but never a colt so madly savage as this one. But to Yusef the chance
was evidently welcome. With an answering laugh, he swaggered out into
the arena, where the men greeted him with shouts. There was the same
procedure as before, and Yusef bounded up lightly into the saddle. This
time, instead of rearing, the frightened beast dashed forward in a wild
effort to escape, but the mounted men, closing up, headed him into the
middle of the ring again, and he went back to his first tactics with a
rapidity that was too much for the handsome lad on his back, and in a
few moments he was thrown heavily. With a shrill scream the colt turned
on him open-mouthed, and Yusef flung up one arm to save his face. But
the men reached him in time, dragging the colt from him by main force.
He rose to his feet unsteadily and limped to the tents behind. Diana
could not see him easily for the throng around him.
Again she looked at the Sheik and ground her teeth. He was stooping to
light a cigarette from a match that Gaston was holding, and then they
walked together nearer to the colt. The animal was now thoroughly
maddened, and it was increasingly difficult to hold him. They went up
close to the struggling, yelling grooms, and the next minute Diana saw
Gaston sitting firmly in the empty saddle. The little man rode
magnificently, and put up a longer fight than the others had done, but
at last his turn came, and he went flying over the colt's head. He came
down lightly on his hands and knees, and scrambled to his feet in an
instant amidst a storm of shouts and laughter. Laughing himself he came
back to the Sheik with a shrug of the shoulders and outspread, eloquent
hands. They spoke together for a moment, too low for Diana to hear, and
then Ahmed Ben Hassan went again into the middle of the ring. Diana's
breath came more quickly. She guessed his intention before he reached
the colt, and she moved forward from under the awning and joined
Gaston, who was wrapping his handkerchief round a torn hand.
"Monseigneur will try?" she asked a little breathlessly.
Gaston looked at her quickly. "Try, Madame?" he repeated in a queer
voice. "Yes, he will try."
Again the empty saddle was filled, and a curious hush came over the
watching crowd. Diana looked on with bright, hard eyes, her heart
beating heavily. She longed passionately that the colt might kill him,
and, at the same time, illogically, she wanted to see him master the
infuriated animal. The sporting instinct in her acknowledged and
responded to the fight that was going on before her eyes. She hated him
and she hoped that he might die, but she was forced to admire the
wonderful horsemanship that she was watching. The Sheik sat like a
rock, and every effort made to unseat him was unsuccessful. The colt
plunged wildly, making furious blind dashes backward and forward,
stopping dead in the hope of dislodging his rider, twirling round
suddenly until it seemed impossible that he could keep his feet. Then
he started rearing, straight up, his forelegs beating the air, higher
and higher, and then down, to commence again without a moment's
breathing-space.
Diana heard Gaston's breath whistle through his teeth. "Look, Madame!"
he cried sharply, and Diana saw the Sheik give a quick glance behind
him, and, as the colt shot up again, almost perpendicular, with a jerk
he pulled him deliberately over backwards, leaping clear with a
tremendous effort as the horse crashed to the ground. He was in the
saddle again almost before the dazed creature had struggled to its
feet. And then began a scene that Diana never forgot. It was the final
struggle that was to end in defeat for either man or horse, and the
Sheik had decided that it was not to be for the man. It was a
punishment of which the untamed animal was never to lose remembrance.
The savagery and determination of the man against the mad determination
of the horse. It was a hideous exhibition of brute strength and
merciless cruelty. Diana was almost sick with horror from the
beginning; she longed to turn away, but her eyes clung fascinated to
the battle that was going on. The hush that had fallen on the crowd had
given way to roars of excitement, and the men pressed forward eagerly,
to give back precipitately when the still-fighting animal's heels
flashed too near.
Diana was shaking all over and her hands were clenching and unclenching
as she stared at the man, who seemed a part of the horse he was sitting
so closely. Would it never end? She did not care now which killed the
other so that it would only stop. The man's endurance seemed mere
bravado. She clutched Gaston's arms with a hand that was wringing wet.
"It is horrible," she gasped with an accent of loathing.
"It is necessary," he replied quietly.
"Nothing can justify that," she cried passionately.
"Your pardon, Madame. He must learn. He killed a man this morning,
threw him, and what you call in English 'savaged' him."
Diana hid her face in her hands. "I can't bear it," she said pitifully.
A few minutes later Gaston clicked his tongue against his teeth. "See,
Madame. It is over," he said gently.
She looked up fearfully. The Sheik was standing on the ground beside
the colt, who was swaying slowly from side to side with heaving sides
and head held low to the earth, dripping blood and foam. And as she
looked he tottered and collapsed exhausted. There was a rush from all
sides, and Gaston went towards his master, who towered above the crowd
around him.
Diana turned away with an exclamation of disgust. It was enough to have
seen a display of such brutality; it was too much to stand by while his
fellow-savages acclaimed him for his cruelty.
She went slowly back into the tent, shaken with what she had seen, and
stood in undecided hesitation beside the divan. The helpless feeling
that she so often experienced swept over her with renewed force. There
was nowhere that she could get away from him, no privacy, no respite.
Day and night she must endure his presence with no hope of escape. She
closed her eyes in a sudden agony, and then stiffened at the sound of
his voice outside.
He came in laughing, a cigarette dangling from one blood-stained hand,
while with the other he wiped the perspiration from his forehead,
leaving a dull red smear. She shrank from him, looking at him with
blazing eyes. "You are a brute, a beast, a devil! I hate you!" she
choked furiously.
For a moment an ugly look crossed his face, and then he laughed again.
"Hate me by all means, _ma belle_, but let your hatred be
thorough. I detest mediocrity," he said lightly, as he passed on into
the other room.
She sank down on to the couch. She had never felt so desperate, so
powerless. She stared straight before her, shivering, as she went over
the scene she had just witnessed, her fingers picking nervously at the
jade-green silk of her dress. She longed for some power that would
deaden her feelings and blunt her capacity for suffering. She looked at
Gaston with hard eyes when he came in. He had approved of what the
Sheik had done, would have done it himself if he had been able. They
were all alike.
"The man who was hurt first," she asked abruptly, with a touch of her
old hauteur in her voice, "is he dead?"
"Oh no, Madame. He has concussion but he will be all right. They have
hard heads, these Arabs."
"And Yusef?"
Gaston grinned. "_Le petit_ Sheik has a broken collar-bone. It is
nothing. A few days' holiday to be petted in his harem, _et
voila_!"
"His harem?" echoed Diana in surprise. "Is he married?"
"_Mais oui_, Madame. He has two wives."
At Diana's exclamation he shrugged deprecatingly. "_Que
voulez-vous?_ It is the custom of the country," he said tolerantly,
with the air of conceding a melancholy fact with the best grace
possible.
The customs of the country was dangerous ground, and Diana changed the
subject hastily. "Where did you learn to ride, Gaston?"
"In a racing-stable at Auteuil, Madame, when I was a boy. Then I was
five years in the French cavalry. After that I came to Monseigneur."
"And you have been with him--how long?"
"Fifteen years, Madame."
"Fifteen years," she repeated wonderingly. "Fifteen years here, in the
desert?"
"Here and elsewhere, Madame," he answered rather more shortly than
usual, and with a murmur of excuse left the tent.
Diana leaned back against the cushions with a little sigh. Gaston need
not have been afraid that she was trying to learn his master's secrets
from him. She had not fallen as low as that. The mystery of the man
whose path had crossed hers so terribly seemed to augment instead of
lessen as the time went on. What was the power in him that compelled
the devotion of his wild followers and the little French ex-cavalryman?
She knit her forehead in perplexity and was still puzzling over it when
he came back. Immaculate and well-groomed he was very different from
the dishevelled, bloodstained savage of half-an-hour before. She shot a
nervous glance at him, remembering her outburst, but he was not angry.
He looked grave, but his gravity seemed centred in himself as he passed
his lean fingers tenderly over his smooth chin. She had seen Aubrey do
similarly hundreds of times. Occidental or Oriental, men seemed very
alike. She waited for him to speak and waited vainly. One of the
taciturn fits to which she had grown accustomed had come over
him--hours sometimes in which he simply ignored her altogether. The
evening meal was silent. He spoke once to Gaston, but he spoke in
Arabic, and the servant replied only with a nod of compliance. And
after Gaston was gone he did not speak for a long time, but sat on the
divan, apparently absorbed in his thoughts.
Restless, Diana moved about the tent, listlessly examining objects that
she knew by heart, and flirting over the pages of the French magazines
she had read a dozen times. Usually she was thankful for his silent
moods. To-night with a woman's perversity she wanted him to speak. She
was unstrung, and the utter silence oppressed her. She glanced over her
shoulder at him once or twice, but his back looked unapproachable. Yet
when he called her, with a swift revulsion of feeling, she wished he
had kept silent. She went to him slowly. She was too unnerved to-night
to struggle against him. What would be the use? she thought wearily; it
would only end in defeat as it always did. He pulled her down on the
divan beside him, and before she realised what he was doing slipped a
long jade necklace over her head. For a moment she looked stupidly at
the wonderful thing, almost unique in the purity of its colour and the
marvellous carving on the uniform square pieces of which it was
composed, and then with a low cry she tore it off and flung it on the
ground.
"How dare you?" she gasped.
"You don't like it?" he asked in his low, unruffled voice, his eyebrows
raised in real or assumed surprise. "Yet it matches your dress," and
lightly his long fingers touched the folds of green silk swathed across
the youthful curve of her breast. He glanced at an open box filled with
shimmering stones on a low stool beside him.
"Pearls are too cold and diamonds too banal for you," he said slowly.
"You should wear nothing but jade. It is the colour of the evening sky
against the sunset of your hair."
He had never spoken like that to her before, or used that tone of
voice. His methods had been more fierce than tender. She glanced up
swiftly at his face, but it baffled her. There was no love in his eyes
or even desire, nothing but an unusual gentleness. "Perhaps you would
prefer the diamonds and the pearls," he went on, pointing disdainfully
at the box.
"No, no. I hate them! I hate them all! I will not wear your jewels. You
have no right to think that I am that kind of woman," she cried
hysterically.
"You do not like them? _Bon Dieu!_ None of the other women ever
refused them. On the contrary, they could never get enough," he said
with a laugh.
Diana looked up with a startled glance, a look of horror dawning in her
eyes. "Other women?" she repeated blankly.
"You didn't suppose you were the first, did you?" he asked with brutal
candour. "Don't look at me like that. They were not like you, they came
to me willingly enough--too willingly. Allah! How they bored me! I
tired of them before they tired of me."
She flung her arm across her eyes with a dry sob, straining away from
him. She had never thought of that. In the purity of her mind it had
never occurred to her. She was only one of many, one of a succession of
mistresses, taken and discarded at his whim. She writhed with the shame
that filled her. "Oh, you hurt me!" she whispered very low, and then
anger killed all other feeling. He had loosened his arm about her and
she wrenched herself free and sprang to her feet. "I hate you, do you
understand? I hate you! I hate you!"
He lit a cigarette leisurely before answering and moved into a more
comfortable position on the divan. "So you have already told me this
afternoon," he said at length coolly, "and with reiteration your remark
becomes less convincing, _ma cherie_."
Her anger ebbed away. She was too tired to be angry. She was humiliated
and hurt, and the man before her had it in his power to hurt her more,
but she was at his mercy and to-night she could not fight. She pushed
the hair off her forehead with a heavy sigh and looked at the Sheik's
long length stretched out on the couch, the steely strength of his
limbs patent even in the indolent attitude in which he was lying, at
his brown handsome face, inscrutable as it always was to her, and the
feeling of helplessness came back with renewed force and with it the
sense of her own pitiful weakness against his force, compelling her to
speak. "Have you never felt pity for a thing that was weaker than
yourself? Have you never spared anything or any one in all your life?
Have you nothing in your nature but cruelty? Are all Arabs hard like
you?" she said shakily. "Has love never even made you merciful?"
He glanced up at her with a harsh laugh, and shook his head. "Love?
_Connais pas!_ Yes, I do," he added with swift mockery, "I love my
horses."
"When you don't kill them," she retorted.
"I am corrected. When I don't kill them."
There was something in his voice that made her reckless, that made her
want to hurt him. "If you give no love to the--the women whom you bring
here, do you give love to the women of your harem? You have a harem, I
suppose, somewhere?" she braved him with curling lip and scornful
voice, but as she spoke she knew that she had only hurt herself and her
voice faltered.
His hand reached out suddenly and he dragged her down into his arms
again with a laugh. "And if I have, are you jealous? What if the nights
I spent away from you were passed in my harem--what then?"
"Then may Allah put it into the heart of one of your wives to poison
you so that you never come back," she said fiercely.
"Allah! So beautiful and so bloodthirsty," he said in bantering
reproof. Then he turned her face up to his, smiling into her angry eyes
with amusement. "I have no harem and, thanks be to Allah, no wives,
_cherie._ Does that please you?"
"Why should I care? It is nothing to me," she replied sharply, with a
vivid blush.
He held her closer, looking deeply into her eyes, holding them as he
could when he liked, in spite of her efforts to turn them away--a
mesmerism she could not resist.
"Shall I make you care? Shall I make you love me? I can make women love
me when I choose."
She went very white and her eyes flickered. She knew that he was only
amusing himself, that he was utterly indifferent to her feelings, that
he did not care if she hated or loved him, but it was a new form of
torture that was more detestable than anything that had gone before it.
It infuriated her that he could even suggest that she could come to
care for him, that she could ever look on him as anything but a brutal
savage who had committed a hideous outrage, that she could ever have
any feeling for him except hatred and loathing. That he should class
her with the other women he spoke of revolted her, she felt degraded,
soiled as she had never done before, and she had thought that she had
felt the utmost humiliation of her position.
The colour rushed back into her face. "I would rather you killed me,"
she cried passionately.
"So would I," he said drily, "for if you loved me you would bore me and
I should have to let you go. While as it is"--he laughed softly--"as it
is I do not regret the chance that took me into Biskra that day."
He let her go and got up with a yawn, watching her approvingly as she
crossed the tent. The easy swing of her boyish figure and the defiant
carriage of her head reminded him of one of his own thoroughbred
horses. She was as beautiful and as wild as they were. And as he broke
them so would he break her. She was nearly tamed now, but not quite,
and by Allah! it should be quite! As he turned his foot struck against
the jade necklace lying on the rug where she had thrown it. He picked
it up and called her back. She came reluctantly, slowly, with mutinous
eyes.
He held out the necklace silently, and silently she stared not at it
but at him. Her heart began to beat faster, and the colour slowly left
her face. "Take it. I wish it," he said quietly.
"No." It was little more than a gasp.
"You will wear it to please me," he went on in the same soft voice, and
the old hateful mockery crept into his eyes, "to please my artistic
soul. I have an artistic soul even though I am only an Arab."
"I will not!"
The mockery was wiped out of his eyes in a flash, giving place to the
usual ferocity, and his forehead knit in the dreaded heavy scowl.
"Diane, obey me!"
She clenched her teeth on her lower lip until a rim of blood stained
their whiteness. If he would only shout or bluster like the average
angry man she felt that she could brave him longer, but the cold quiet
rage that characterised him always was infinitely more sinister, and
paralysed her with its silent force. She had never heard him raise his
voice in anger or quicken his usual slow, soft tone, but there was an
inflection that came into his voice and a look that came into his eyes
that was more terrible than any outburst. She had seen his men shrink
when, standing near him, she had barely been able to hear what he had
said. She had seen a look from him silence a clamorous quarrel that had
broken out among his followers too close to his own tent for his
pleasure. And that inflection was in his voice and that look was in his
eyes now. It was no longer use to resist. The fear of him was an agony.
She would have to obey, as in the end he always forced her to obey. She
wrenched her eyes away from his compelling stare, her bosom heaving
under the soft silk, her chin quivering, and reached out blindly and
took it from him. But the sudden chill of it against her bare breast
seemed to revive the courage that was not yet dead in her. She flung up
her head, the transient colour flaming into her cheeks, and her lips
sprang open, but he drew her to him swiftly, and laid his hand over her
mouth. "I know, I know," he said coldly. "I am a brute and a beast and
a devil. You need not tell me again. It commences to grow tedious." His
hand slipped to her shoulder, his fingers gripping the delicate,
rounded arm. "How much longer are you going to fight? Would it not be
wiser after what you have seen to-day to recognise that I am master?"
"You mean that you will treat me as you treated the colt this
afternoon?" she whispered, her eyes drawn back irresistibly to his in
spite of all her efforts.
"I mean that you must realise that my will is law."
"And if I do not?" He guessed rather than heard the words.
"Then I will teach you, and I think that you will learn--soon."
She quivered in his hands. It was a threat, but how much of it he meant
to be taken literally she did not know. Again every ghastly detail of
the afternoon passed with lightning speed through her mind. When he
punished he punished mercilessly. To what lengths would he go? The Arab
standards were not those of the men amongst whom she had lived. The
position of a woman in the desert was a very precarious one. There were
times when she forgot altogether that he was an Arab until some chance,
as now, drove the hard fact home indisputably. He was an Arab, and as a
woman she need expect no mercy at his hands. His hands! She looked down
for a second sideways at the fingers gripping her shoulder and she saw
them again stained with blood, saw them clenched round the dripping
thong. She knew already by bitter experience the iron grip of his lean
fingers and the compelling strength of his arms. Her quick imagination
leaped ahead. What she had already suffered would be nothing compared
with what would be. The remembrance of the stained, huddled figure of
the servant he had chastised rose before her. And as she battled with
herself, still torn in her passionate desire to make her strong will
and courageous spirit triumph over her coward woman's body that shrank
instinctively from physical torture, his arm tightened around her and
she felt the hard muscles pressing against her shoulders and soft, bare
neck, a suggestion of the force lying dormant beside her. She looked up
at him slowly.
His expression was unchanged, his forehead was still drawn together in
the heavy frown and there was no softening in his eyes. The cruel lines
about his mouth were accentuated and the tiger-look in his face was
more marked than ever. He was not threatening idly; he meant what he
said.
"You had better kill me," she said drearily.
"That would be to admit my own defeat," he replied coolly. "I do not
kill a horse until I have proved beyond all possible doubt that I
cannot tame it. With you I have no such proof. I can tame you and I
will. But it is for you to choose and to choose to-night if you will
obey me willingly or if I must make you. I have been very patient--for
me," he added, with an odd smile flitting across his face, "but my
patience is exhausted. Choose quickly." Insensibly he drew her closer
to him till his arm felt like an inflexible steel band about her, and
she thought with a shudder of the coils of a great serpent closing
round its victim. She made a final effort to conquer herself, but
between her and the broad chest so close to her she seemed to see a
horse's head held low in agony, blood and foam dripping from his
lacerated mouth, and a horse's flanks heaving piteously, torn with the
cruel punishment he had undergone. A sudden nausea came over her,
everything seemed to swim before her eyes, and she swayed against the
man who was holding her. Her bodily fear overruled her mind. She could
not bear any more.
"I will obey you," she whispered heavily.
He took her chin in his fingers and jerked her head up sharply, staring
at her intently until she felt he was looking into her very soul. The
heavy scowl smoothed away but the fierceness lingered in his eyes.
"Good!" he said at length briefly. "You are wise," he added
significantly. He tilted her head further back, bending his own down
until his lips were nearly touching hers. She shivered involuntarily,
an anguished appeal leaping into her eyes. He smiled ironically. "Do
you hate them so much, my kisses?"
She swallowed convulsively.
"You are at least candid if you are not complimentary;" and with that
he released her and turned away.
She reached the curtain that divided the two rooms, her heart beating
wildly, giddy with the strain that she had gone through. She paused a
moment and looked back at him, amazed at her own temerity. He had
unbuttoned the flap of the tent and was standing in the entrance
looking out into the night. The scent of the peculiar tobacco he used
drifted to her with the draught from the open door. Her eyes grew
puzzled. Would she ever understand him? To-night he had given her a
choice instead of simply enforcing his will, he had made her choose to
save herself, he had proved his determination and his mastery over her.
And with his last words the unexpected gentleness had come into his
voice again and the cruel lines about his mouth had relaxed in a smile
of amusement. It was the swift transition from ferocity to gentleness
that she could never fathom. His complex nature was beyond her
understanding. She would not try to understand him; she could never
know the depths of his baffling personality. She only knew that for
some reason of his own he had spared her, and she feared him more than
ever.