A woman of Europe, burning with rage like Mabrouka's, might have blurted out fierce reproaches or insults; but the woman of the harem did not even put her discovery into words. She looked at Ourieda and the Roumia, and said quietly: "It was a charming idea to wear each other's clothes so that each might have something of the other in her heart forever. Already I can see a likeness. But do not hurry to change now. I came to say that for a reason, to be explained later, the caravan cannot start to-day. Our Little White Moon will light our sky for a time longer. Come with me, Embarka, I have work for thee. These dear children may have the pleasure of dressing each other."

Ashy pale under her bronze skin, Embarka obeyed without protest, throwing one look at her beloved mistress as she followed Lella Mabrouka to her fate. Her great, dilated eyes said: "Good-bye forever, oh, thou whom I love, and for whom I have given myself without regret."

When they were left alone the girls fell into each other's arms as if for protection against some terrible fate coming swiftly to destroy them. Though the September dawn had in it the warmth of summer, they shivered as they clung together.

"It is all over!" Ourieda said. "Allah is against me."

"What will happen?" asked Sanda, a horror of the unknown upon her.

"Nothing to thee. Do not be afraid."

"I'm not afraid for myself. I am thinking of you."

"For me this is the end."

"You don't mean—surely your father will not——"

"He will not take my life. He will take from me his love. And I shall be watched every instant till I have been given to Tahar. I shall not even have a chance to kill myself—unless I do it now."

"Ourieda! No—there's hope still. Who can tell——"

But Ourieda did not hear. Suddenly she tore herself free from Sanda's arms, and running to one of the carved cedarwood doors in the white wall of the bedroom, opened a little cupboard. There, fumbling among perfumed parcels, rolled as Arab women roll their garments, she snatched from a bundle of silk a small stiletto with a jewelled handle. Sanda had seen it before, and had been bidden to admire its rough, square emeralds and queerly shaped pearls. The thing had belonged to Ourieda's mother, and had been given to the daughter by the Agha on her sixteenth birthday, nearly a year ago. Ben Raana's Spanish wife had worn it in her dark hair; but Ben Raana's daughter, even from the first, had thought of it for another purpose. Last night, when Embarka had packed the jewels among Sanda's things for the secret journey, Ourieda had kept out the stiletto in case of failure. Now it was ready to her hand, and before Sanda could reach her the point of its thin blade pressed the flesh over the heart. But the pin prick of pain as the skin broke was too sharp a prophecy of anguish for the petted child who knew herself physically a coward. She gave a cry, dropped the stiletto as if the handle had burnt her, and, stumbling against the girl who tried to hold her up, fell in a limp heap on the floor.

There was no time to hide the stiletto, even if Sanda had thought to do so, before Taous, Lella Mabrouka's woman, came quietly into the room. No doubt Mabrouka had meant to send her, but had not told the girls, because she wished her servant to surprise them. Gathering up Ourieda, who had fainted, or seemed to faint, the negress's bright eyes spied the dagger. Freeing one hand as easily as if Ourieda's weight had been that of a baby, she took the weapon and slipped it into her dress. Whether she meant to show the dagger to her mistress, or to keep it for herself, who could say?

Sanda would not leave Ourieda when the girl had been laid on the bed by Taous, but presently, after half an hour's absence, Lella Mabrouka returned. "Thou mayest go now," said the formidable woman. "We who love and understand her will restore our Rose with her name's perfume, which has the power of bringing back lost senses. Have no fear for her health, Little Moon. All will be well with our sweet bride. Dress thyself, not for a journey, but for a visit from my brother, the Agha, who will do himself the honour of calling upon thee when thou art ready to descend to our reception-room. Thou being a Roumia, with customs different to ours, may receive him alone, otherwise I would leave our Little Rose to Taous, and go with thee."

Despite the unbroken courtesy of Mabrouka's manner, or all the more because of its frozen calm, Sanda was sick with a deadly fear. She was not afraid that the Agha would do her bodily harm, but the whole world seemed to have come to an end because of her treachery. She did not know how she could meet his eyes, those eyes of an eagle, after what she had tried to do. She was afraid he would question her about what she knew of Ourieda's secrets, and though she resolved that nothing should make her speak, her heart seemed turning to water.



CHAPTER XX

THE BEAUTY DOCTOR

"If my father were only here!" Sanda said as she went down to the great room of state where the ladies of the Agha's harem received their few visitors. And then she thought of Maxime St. George, her soldier. She recalled the night when she had been afraid of the storm, and he had sat by her through the long hours. Somehow, she did not know why, it helped a little to remember that.

Ben Raana, graver and sterner than she had seen him, was waiting in the early dawn which struck out bleak lights from the dangling prisms of the big French chandeliers—the ugly chandeliers of which Lella Mabrouka was proud. He asked no questions; and somehow that seemed worse than the ordeal for which Sanda had braced herself. The Agha's voice, politely speaking French, was studiously gentle, but icy contempt was in his dark eyes when they were not deliberately turned from the trusted guest who had betrayed him. He said he had summoned her to announce, with regret, that, owing to the illness of the man appointed as conductor of the caravan, it would not be able to start for some time. At present there was no other person equally trustworthy who could be spared. "I am responsible to thy father for thy safety," he added. "And though we poor Arabs are behind these modern times in many ways, we would die rather than betray a trust."

That was a stroke well aimed under the roses of courtesy, and Sanda could but receive it in silence. She had supposed when Lella Mabrouka spoke of the caravan not going that it was only a threat. Her expectation was to be sent out of the house at once, in disgrace, and though her soul yearned over Ourieda, all that was timid in her pined to go. It was surprising—if anything could surprise her then—to hear that she must remain.

"Almost surely I shan't be allowed to see Ourieda again, and if I can't help her any more I might as well beg father to send for me at once," she told herself, when Ben Raana, formally taking leave of her, with hand on forehead and heart, had gone. She went slowly and miserably to her own room to await developments, and while she waited, hastily wrote the message to Colonel DeLisle which three days later found him at Touggourt.

In writing, she feared that her letter might never be allowed to reach her father; but she wronged Ben Raana. He had spoken no more than the truth (though he spoke to hurt) in saying he would rather die than betray a trust. At that time he still kept his calmness, because the plot arranged by the two girls had not succeeded. His daughter was still safe under his own roof, and it was not an unexpected blow to him that she should have wished to escape from Tahar. He knew in his heart that Ourieda was more to blame than Sanda, and seeing shame on the young, pale face of the Roumia he had no fear of anything George DeLisle's daughter might report to her father. Her letter went by the courier, as all her other letters had gone. Mabrouka's advice to keep it back, or at least to steam the envelope open and see what was inside, was scorned by Ben Raana; and to Sanda's astonishment she was actually sent for to visit Ourieda.

This was in the afternoon of the day whose dawn had seen the girls' defeat. Ourieda was in bed, and Taous sat by the open door with an embroidery frame. But Taous understood neither French nor English. In exchange for the lessons Ourieda gave Sanda in Arabic, Sanda had given lessons in English; therefore, lest Aunt Mabrouka might be listening, and lest she might have picked up more French than she cared to confess, the two girls chose the language of which Ourieda had learned to understand more than she could speak.

"How thankful I am to see you, dearest!" cried Sanda. "Didn't you think, after what your aunt said, that I should be sent away this morning? Would you have dreamed, even if I stayed, that we should be allowed to meet and talk like this?"

Ourieda answered, slowly and brokenly, that she had not believed Sanda would be permitted to go. Aunt Mabrouka had not stopped to reflect when she had made that threat, or else she had hoped to part them, and to make Ourieda believe Sanda had gone. "You see," the girl explained in her halting English, "they—my father and my aunt—shall have too much of the fear to let you go till after all is finished."

"Finished?"

"When the marrying has been over thou canst go. Then it too late. My father shall be sure, thee and me, we know where M—— is, that our plan was for him. I say no, but he not believe. That is for why they keep thee here, so thou not tell M—— things about me. But my father, he shall not be mean and little in his mind like my aunt. He not listen to the words she speak when she say not let us meet together. My father know very well now we shall be finded out, it is the end for us. He not have fear for what we do if some person shall watch to see I not kill myself."

"What has become of poor Embarka?" Sanda asked.

Ourieda shook her head, unutterable sadness in her eyes. "I think never shall I know that in this world."

Ill, without feigning, as the girl was, the wedding was to be hurried on. The original idea had been for the week of wedding festivities to begin on the girl's seventeenth birthday; but now Ben Raana said that, in promising his daughter the delay she asked for, he had always intended to begin the week before and give the bride to the bridegroom on the anniversary of her birth.

Ourieda no longer pleaded. She had given up hope, and resigned herself with the deadly calmness of resignation which only women of the Mussulman faith can feel. It was clear that her will was not as Allah's will. And women came not on earth for happiness. It was not sure that they even had souls.

"Allah has appointed that I marry my cousin Tahar," she said to Sanda, "and I shall marry him, because I have not another stiletto nor any poison, and I am always watched so that, even if I had the courage, I could not throw myself down from the roof. But afterward—I am not sure yet what I shall do. All I know is that I shall never be a wife to Tahar. Something will happen to one of us. It may be to me, or it may be to him. But something must happen."

The Agha himself had caused to be built at Djazerta a hammam copied in miniature after a fine Moorish bath in Algiers, at which he bathed when he went north to attend the governor's yearly ball. All Arab brides of high rank or low must go through great ceremonies of the bath in the week of the wedding feast, and no exception could be made in Ourieda's case. The privacy of the hammam was secured for the Agha's daughter by hiring it for a day, and no one was to be admitted to the women's part of the bath except the few ladies who had enough social importance to expect invitations. That Lella Mabrouka and Sanda would be there was a matter of course; and, besides them, there were the wives and daughters of two or three sheikhs and caids, all of whom Sanda already knew by sight, as they had paid ceremonious visits to the great man's harem since her arrival at Djazerta.

The Agha had a carriage, large, old-fashioned, and musty-smelling, but lined with gold-stamped crimson silk from Tunis. It could be used only between his house and the town, or to reach the oasis just beyond, for there was nowhere else to go; but, drawn by stalwart mules in Spanish harness, for years it had taken the ladies of his household to the baths and back. Lella Mabrouka and Taous (both veiled, though they had passed the age of attractiveness when hiding the face is obligatory) chaperoned the bride and her friend, the coachman and his assistant being fat and elderly eunuchs.

At the doorway of the domed building, the only new one in Djazerta, there was much stately fuss of screening the ladies as they left the seclusion of the carriage. Then came a long, tiled corridor, which opened into a room under the dome of the hammam, and there the party was met not only by bowing female attendants, but by the guests, who had arrived early to welcome them. Ourieda was received with pretty cries and childlike, excited chattering, not only by her girl friends, but the older women. All were undressed, ready for the bath, or they could not have followed the bride to the hot rooms; and that was the object and pleasure of the visit. Every one shrieked compliments as the clothing of the Agha's daughter was delicately removed by the beaming negresses; and gifts of gold-spangled bonbons, wonderfully iced cakes, crystallized fruit, flowers, gilded bottles of concentrated perfume, mother-o'-pearl and tortoise boxes, gaudy silk handkerchiefs made in Paris for Algerian markets, and little silver fetiches were presented to the bride. She thanked the givers charmingly, though in a manner so subdued and with a face so grave that the visitors would have been astonished had not Lella Mabrouka explained that she had been ill with an attack of fever.

From hot room to hotter room the women trooped, resting, when they felt inclined, upon mattings spread on marble, while the bride, the queen of the occasion, was given a divan. They ate sweets and drank pink sherbet or syrup-sweet coffee, and, instead of being bathed by one of the attendants, Ourieda was waited upon by a great personage who came to Djazerta only for the weddings of the highest. Originally she was from Tunis, where her profession is a fine art; but having been superseded there she had moved to Algiers, then to Touggourt; and thence the Agha had summoned her for his daughter. She was Zakia, la hennena, a skilled beautifier of women; and she had been sent for, some days in advance of the great occasion, in order (being past her youth) to recover from the fatigue of the journey. None of the young girls had ever seen her, and exclaiming with joy they fingered her scented pastes and powders.

This bridal bath ceremony, being more intricate than any ordinary bath, took a long time, and when it was over, and Ourieda a perfumed statue of ivory, the cooling-room was entered for the dyeing of the bride's hair. The girl's face showed how she disliked the process; but it being an unwritten law that the hair of an Arab bride must be coloured with sabgha, she submitted. After the first shudder she sat with downcast eyes, looking indifferent, for nothing mattered to her now. Since Manoeel would never see it again, and perhaps it would soon lie deep under earth in a coffin, she cared very little after all that the long hair he had thought beautiful must lose its lovely sheen for fashion's sake.

Now and then, as she worked, Zakia stooped over her victim, bringing her old, peering face close to the bowed face of the girl to make sure the dye did not touch it. Sanda, who had been grudgingly granted a thin muslin robe for the bath because of her strange Roumia ideas of baring the face and covering the body, noticed these bendings of la hennena, but thought nothing of them until she happened to catch a new expression in Ourieda's eyes. Suddenly the gloom of hopelessness had gone out of them: and it could not be that this was the effect of the compliments rained upon her in chorus by the guests, for until that instant the most fantastic praise of hair, features, and figure had not extorted a smile. What could the woman have said to give back in an instant the girl's lost bloom and sparkle? Sanda wondered. It was like a miracle. But it lasted only for a moment. Then it seemed that by an effort Ourieda masked herself once more with tragedy. She turned one of her slow, sad glances toward her aunt; and Sanda was sure she looked relieved on seeing Lella Mabrouka absorbed in talk with the plump wife of a caid.

According to custom in great houses of the south, la hennena was escorted, after the women's fete at the hammam, to the home of the bride, where she was to spend the remainder of the festive week in heightening the girl's beauty. She was given the guest-room of the harem, second in importance to that occupied by Colonel DeLisle's daughter. This, as it happened, was nearer to Ourieda's room than Sanda's or even Lella Mabrouka's; and as, during the two days that followed, Zakia was almost constantly occupied in blanching the bride's ivory skin with almond paste, staining her fingers red as coral with a decoction of henna and cochineal, and saturating her hair and body with a famous permanent perfume, sometimes Lella Mabrouka and Taous ventured to leave the two girls chaperoned only by la hennena. That was because neither had seen the sudden light in Ourieda's eyes after the face of Zakia had approached hers at the hammam.

For the first day there was no solution of the mystery for Sanda, who had waited to hear she knew not what. But at last, in a room littered with pastes and perfume bottles, and lighted by the traditional long candles wound with coloured ribbon, Ourieda spoke, in Arabic, that the hennena might not be hurt.

"Zakia says I may tell thee our secret," she said. "At first she was afraid, but now she sees that she may trust thee as I do. Didst thou guess there was a secret?"

"Yes," answered Sanda.

"I thought so! Well, it is this: At the hammam is employed a cousin of Embarka's. I feared never to hear of Embarka again; but my father is more enlightened than I thought. He might have ordered her death, and the eunuchs would have obeyed, and no one would ever have known. Yet he did no more than send her away, giving her no time even to pack that which was hers. He did not care what became of her, being sure that she could never again enter our house. But he did not know of the cousin in the hammam. And perhaps he did not stop to think that I might have given Embarka jewels for helping me. She would have helped without payment, because she loved me. But I wished to reward her. She hid the things in her clothing; and when she was turned out she still thought of me, not of herself. She knew I would go to the hammam before my marriage, and that Zakia had been sent for to bathe me and make me beautiful. So she gave her cousin there a present, and all the rest of the jewels she gave to Zakia, for a promise Zakia made. Nothing has Embarka kept of all my gifts. It was like her! The rest is easy now. I shall never again know happiness, but neither shall I know the shame of giving myself to a man I hate when heart and soul belong to one I love."

"Can la hennena help you to escape?" Sanda wanted to know.

"From Tahar, yes. Here is the way," Ourieda answered. And she held out for Sanda to see a tiny pearl-studded gold box, one of many quaint ornaments on a chain the girl always wore round her neck. She had explained the meaning or contents of each fetich long ago, and Sanda knew all about the sacred eye from Egypt, the white coral horn to ward off evil, the silver and emerald case with a text from the Koran blessed by a great saint or marabout, and the pearl-crusted gold box containing a lock of hair certified to be that of Fatma Zora, the Prophet's favourite daughter.

"I have put the hair with the text," said Ourieda. "Look, in its place this tiny bottle of white powder. Canst thou guess what it is for?"

The blood rushed to Sanda's face, then back to her heart. But she did not answer. She only looked at Ourieda: a wide-eyed, fascinated look.

"Thou hast guessed," the Agha's daughter said in a very little voice like a child's. "But I shall not use it if, when I have told him how I hate him, he consents to let me alone. If he is a fool, why, he brings his fate on himself. This is for his lips, if they try to touch mine."

"But," Sanda gasped; "you would be a——"

"I know the word in thy mind. It is 'murderess.' Yet my conscience would be clear. It would be for the sake of my love—to keep true to my promise at any cost. And the cost might be my life. They would find out; they would know how he died. This is no coward's act like smiling at a man and giving him each day powdered glass or chopped hair of a leopard in his food, which many of our women do, to kill and leave no trace. If I break, I pay."

As she spoke the door opened and Lella Mabrouka came swiftly into the room, fierce-eyed as a tigress whose cub is threatened. She was tight-lipped and silent, but her eyes spoke, and all three knew that she had listened. Such words as she had missed her quick wit had caught and patched together. Ourieda's wish to propitiate Zakia by not seeming to talk secrets before her had undone them both. But it was too late for regrets, and even for lies.

Lella Mabrouka clapped her hands, and Taous came, to be told in a tense voice that the Agha must be summoned. Then Mabrouka turned to the Roumia.

"Go, thou! This has nothing to do with thee," was all she said.

Sanda glanced at her friend, and an answering glance bade her obey. She rose and went out, along the balcony to the door of her own room. This she left open, thinking with a fast-beating heart that if there were any cry she would run back, no matter what they might do to her. But there was no cry, no sound of any kind, only the cooing of doves which had flown down into the fountain court, hoping Ourieda might throw them corn.

The custom of the house was for the three ladies to take their meals together in a room where occasionally, as a great honour, the Agha dined with them. That evening a tray of food was brought to Sanda with polite regrets from Lella Mabrouka because she and her niece were too indisposed by the hot weather to forsake the shelter of their rooms. Politeness, always politeness, with these Arabs of high birth and manners! thought the Irish-French girl in a passionate revolt against the curtain of silk velvet softly let down between her and the secrets of Ben Raana's harem. This time it might be, she said to herself, that politeness covered tragedy. But the same night she received another message from Mabrouka. It was merely to say that, the air of Djazerta not being healthful at this time of year, the Agha had decided, for his daughter's sake, to finish the week of the wedding feast out in the desert, at the douar.



CHAPTER XXI

THE ELEVENTH HOUR

When Max, at the head of his small caravan, came in sight of the Agha's douar, it was almost noon, and the desert, shimmering with heat, was motionless, as if under enchantment. They had travelled through the night, after learning that Ben Raana and his family had gone from Djazerta, with intervals of rest no longer than those allowed to the Legion on march. What they saw was a giant tent as large as a circus tent in a village of America or Europe surrounded at a distance by an army of little tents, black and dirty brown, so flat and low that they were like huge bats with outstretched wings resting on the sand. The great tent of the chief with its high roof, its vast spread of white, red, and amber striped cloth of close-woven camel's hair, rose nobly above all the others, as a mosque rises above a crowd of prostrate worshippers at prayer. For background, there was a clump of trees; for here, in the far southern desert, just outside a waving welter of dunes, lay a region of dayas, where a wilderness of sand and tumbled stones was brightened by green hollows half full of gurgling water.

Never before had Max seen a douar of importance, the desert dwelling of a desert chief. But Manoeel had been here before; and the camel-drivers, if they had not visited this douar, were familiar with others. Max alone wondered at the great tent, whose many different compartments sheltered the Agha, his whole family, and servants brought from Djazerta. As the caravan wound nearer to watching eyes, another tent, not so big, but new and brilliant of colour, separated itself from the vast bulk of the tente sultane.

"What is that?" Max asked Manoeel, who rode beside him as interpreter, his dark-stained face almost covered by the white folds of his woollen hood, the fire of his young eyes dimmed and aged by a pair of cheap, silver-rimmed spectacles such as elderly Arabs wear.

"The Agha must have ordered that new tent to be set up for Tahar," Manoeel answered gruffly; and Max guessed from the sharpening of his tone and the brevity of his explanation that this was the desert dwelling appointed for the bridegroom when he should take his bride.

In the boldness of their plan lay its hope of success; for though Ben Raana's suspicions were on the alert he would not expect the banished lover to ride brazenly up to his tent, side by side with a soldier messenger from Colonel DeLisle. There was an instant of suspense after the corporal on leave and his Arab interpreter were received by the Agha in a reception-room whose walls were red woollen draperies; but it was scarcely longer than a heartbeat. Ben Raana had just come out from another room beyond, where, the curtains falling apart, several guests in the high turbans of desert dignitaries could be seen seated on cushions and waited upon by Soudanese men who were serving a meal.

The Agha scarcely glanced at Max's companion, the dark, spectacled Arab, but announcing in French that no interpreter would be needed, he clapped his hands to summon a servant. One of the black men lifted the red curtains higher and came in, received instructions as to the interpreter's entertainment, and led him away. Max could hardly keep back a sigh of relief, for that had been a bad moment. Now it was over, and with it his personal responsibility in his friend's adventure. It had been agreed between them that Colonel DeLisle's messenger to Ben Raana should have no further hand in the plot against the Agha. The rest was for Manoeel alone, unless at the end help should be necessary (and possible) for Ourieda's rescue.

Max delivered a letter from DeLisle, and the Agha read it slowly through. Then he raised his eyes and fixed them upon the Legionnaire as if wondering how far he might be in his colonel's confidence.

"My friend has sent thee to escort his daughter to Sidi-bel-Abbes," Ben Raana said thoughtfully. "Although he cannot be there himself, he believes the northern climate will be better for her health at this time of year. Perhaps he is right; though my daughter, whom she has visited, would have been delighted as a married woman to keep Mademoiselle DeLisle with her. However, my friend's will is as Allah's will. It must be done. The day after to-morrow my daughter's wedding feast will be over and she will go to her husband's tent. Remain here quietly till then as my guest. Thy interpreter and the persons of thy caravan shall be well cared for, I promise thee, by my household. When my daughter leaves me the daughter of my friend shall go in peace at the same hour, in thy charge."

As he spoke his eyes remained on the messenger's face, watching for any change of expression, and noting the flush that mounted through the soldier-tan.

"I am very sorry," said Max, "but Colonel DeLisle has given me only short leave. There was just enough time to get me to Djazerta, from Touggourt, and to do the journey comfortably to Sidi-bel-Abbes. He is a prompt man, as you know. He thinks and acts quickly. It didn't occur to him that there need be any great delay. Already there has been a day lost returning from Djazerta, where I heard that you were at your douar. A day and a half here, much as I should like to be your guest, would mean overstaying my leave. That, you will see, is impossible."

"If it is impossible, I fear that thou must go from here with thy mission unfulfilled and without Mademoiselle," replied the Agha, irritatingly calm. "For on my side it is impossible to let her go before my daughter is—safely married."

He smiled as he spoke, but the pause and the emphasis on a certain word were deliberate. Max was meant to understand it, in case DeLisle had confided in him. If not, it did not matter; he would realize that he had had his ultimatum. Max did realize this, and, after a stunned second, accepted the inevitable.

"I'll write to Sidi-bel-Abbes and explain. It's all I can do," was the thought which ran through his head as he politely informed the Agha that he would, at any cost, wait for Mademoiselle DeLisle.

"May I see her and deliver in person a letter I have from her father?" he asked.

But Ben Raana regretted that this might not be until all was ready for the start, which must be made in the evening after the end of the marriage feast, unless Corporal St. George preferred to wait till the morning after. The customs of a country must be respected by those sojourning in that country; and the Arab ladies visiting the douar would be scandalized if a young girl were allowed to speak with a strange man. There was nothing for it but submission, and Max submitted, inwardly raging. He wrote explanations to the officer left in charge at Sidi-bel-Abbes, the man to whom he must report; but no letter could reach DeLisle for many weeks.

He was entertained as the Agha's guest, being introduced to Tahar Ben Hadj and several caids invited for the bridegroom's part of the festivities. There was much feasting, with music and strange dances in Tahar's tent at night, and outside, fantasia for the douar in honour of the wedding; sheep roasted whole, and "powder play." What was going on in the bride's half of her father's great tent Max did not know, but he fancied that, above the beating of Tahar's tomtoms and the wild singing of an imported Arab tenor, he could hear soft, distant wailings of the ghesbah and the shrill "You—you—you!" of excited women. He wondered if Sanda knew that he had come to take her away, and whether Manoeel had contrived to send a message to the bride.

* * * * *

That same night Khadra Bent Djellab, the woman who had travelled from Touggourt to return as Sanda's attendant, came from the camp of the caravan asking if she might see her new mistress. All was hurry and confusion in the women's part of the tente sultane, for a great feast was going on which would last through most of the night. The excited servants told Khadra that she must go, and come again to the tent in the morning; but just then the music for a dance of love began, and Khadra begged so hard to stay that she was allowed to stand with the servants. She had never seen Sanda DeLisle, but she had been told by the interpreter ("an order from the master," said he, slipping a five-franc piece into her hand) that there would be no other Roumia in the company. When Khadra caught sight of a golden-brown head, uncovered among the heads wrapped in coloured silks or gauze, she cautiously edged nearer it, behind the double rank of serving-women. All were absorbed in staring at the dancing-girl, a celebrity who had been brought from an oasis town farther south. She had arrived at Djazerta and had travelled to the douar when the family hastily flitted; but this was the night of her best dance. Nobody remembered Khadra. When she was close behind Sanda she pretended to drop a big silk handkerchief, such as Arab women love. Squatting down to pick it up, she contrived to thrust into a small white hand hanging over an edge of the divan a ball of crumpled paper, and gently shut the fingers over it. A few months, or even weeks, ago Sanda would have started at the touch and looked round. But her long stay among Arab women, and the drama of the last eight days, had schooled her to self-control. Instantly she realized that some new plot was on, and that she was to be mixed up in it. She was deadly sick of plotting, but she loved Ourieda, and had advised her not to give up hope until the last minute. Perhaps something unexpected might come to pass. With that soft, secret touch on her hand, and the feel of the paper in her palm, she knew that her prophecy was being fulfilled.

Not far away sat the bride, raised high above the rest of the company on a kind of throne made of carved wood, painted red and thickly gilded. It had served generations of brides in the Agha's family, and had been brought out from Djazerta. Sanda glanced up from the divan of cushions on which she and the other women guests reclined to see if Ourieda was looking her way. But the girl's great eyes were fixed and introspective.

When Sanda was sure that Lella Mabrouka and Taous, her spy, were both intent on the figure posturing in the cleared space in the centre of the room, she cautiously unfolded the ball of paper. Holding it on her lap, half hidden by the frame of her hands, she saw a fine, clear black writing, a writing new to her. The words—French words—seemed to spring to her eyes:

"Tell Ourieda that I am here. She will know who. Perhaps you know also. There is only one thing to do. She must go, when the time comes, to Tahar's tent, but let her have no fear. At night, when her bridegroom should come to her, I will come instead and take her away. No one will know till the morning after, so we shall have a long start. For a while I will hide her in a house at Djazerta, where I have friends who will keep us safe until the search is over. No one will think of the town. All will believe that we have joined you and the caravan which your father has sent in charge of Corporal St. George. It is with him I have come, for I, too, am a Legionnaire. I hope to see St. George and explain my latest plans, but already he knows that I shall try and reach Spain or Italy. There I can make myself known without fear of capture and imprisonment. I can get engagements and money. If anything prevents my seeing St. George again, after I have started, show him this, or let him know what I have said.

M.V."

Sanda's cheeks, which had been pale, brightened to carnation as she read; but the dancer held all eyes. The girl crumpled up the letter and palmed it again, wondering how to show it to Ourieda, for they had not once been allowed a moment alone in each other's company since the scene with la hennena. Not that Sanda was suspected of a hand in that affair, but she might have a hand in another plot. The thing was, politely and kindly, to keep her a prisoner until after Ourieda had gone to her husband. Then Tahar could protect his property; and once an Arab girl is married, she is seldom asked to elope, even by the bravest and most enterprising of lovers. Some pretext must be thought of for the giving of Manoeel's letter. But what—what?

The answer was not long in coming. After the dance all the women, with the exception of the throned, bejewelled bride, sprang or scrambled up from their cushions to congratulate the celebrity. Some of them testified their admiration by offering her rings, anklets, or little gilded bottles of attar-of-rose which they had been holding in their handkerchiefs; and even Aunt Mabrouka's sharp eyes did not see Sanda slip the ball of paper into Ourieda's hand when passing the throne to give a gold brooch to the favourite.

The bride herself was forgotten for a few minutes. Every one was caressing the dancer, patting her much-ringed hands, or touching her bracelets and counting the almost countless gold coins of her head ornaments and necklace. When Sanda dared glance across the crowd toward Ourieda she saw by the look in her eyes that the girl had read the letter.



CHAPTER XXII

THE HEART OF MAX

Max had resigned himself days ago to Juan Garcia's desertion from the Legion, since the girl must be saved. But he was far from happy about his own position. The danger was that the day when he was due to report himself at Sidi-bel-Abbes would come and he would be absent. His letter of explanation ought to have arrived by that time, but it might be considered the trick of a deserter. And even when he appeared, the news of Garcia's desertion from his caravan must be told. The loss of a man would be a black mark against him, and he would probably forfeit the stripe on which he had been congratulated by the colonel.

There was consolation in the thought of seeing Sanda again, and the certainty that she would "stand up" for him; but he did not realize just how much that consolation would mean, until, after the delay of a day and a half, word came that Mademoiselle DeLisle was ready to leave her friend. The caravan had been assembled and waiting for the last hour, and Max knew that the bride must have gone to her husband's tent. The music had been wilder than before, the women's cries of joy louder and more triumphant; and while he had been examining the trappings of Sanda's camel a procession had gone by carrying aloft several big boxes draped with brocade and cloth-of-gold: the bride's luggage on its way to her new home. The feasting in the tente sultane would continue all that night, as on other nights; but Ourieda and Tahar would be left quietly in the tent of the bridegroom, alone until after dawn, when Tahar would steal away and the girl's women friends would rush in to wish her joy. That would be the hour, Max told himself, when all would be found out, and the chase would begin. He had seen Manoeel once since the last details of the plot to rescue Ourieda had been settled. He knew that Manoeel had sent a letter to her through Sanda, to whom it had been given; but he was not sure if Sanda had been warned of the part she would have to play.

It was of this, more than the personality of Sanda herself, that he thought, as he waited, expecting her to come out from the Agha's tent. But instead, she came from another direction, and he did not recognize the slim figure in Arab dress until the well-remembered voice spoke through the white veil:

"It is—my Soldier St. George!" Sanda cried in English, and a thrill ran through the young man's blood. He forgot all about himself, his risks and his perplexities, and nothing seemed to matter except that Sanda DeLisle had come back into his life—the girl whose long, soft hair brushed his face in dreams, the girl who had saved his belief in womanhood and raised up for him, in his black need, a new ideal.

A tall negro woman, whose forehead was a strip of ebony, whose eyes were beads of jet above her snowy veil, accompanied Mademoiselle DeLisle, and the two had arrived from the bridegroom's tent, where doubtless Sanda had been bidding the bride good-bye. Max realized that her attendant would be shocked if he should offer to shake hands with the girl, so he only bowed, and answered hastily in English that he was glad—glad to see her again—glad to have the honour of being her guide. Khadra was brought forward, and Sanda spoke a few words to her in Arabic. Then the girl was helped into her bassourah, luggage being brought out by eunuchs from the Agha's tent and packed in to balance the other side. Only when the Roumia had retired behind the blue and red and purple curtains did Ben Raana appear to wish his friend's daughter and messenger the blessing of Allah on their journey. The caravan started, and it was not until after the douar, with its green daya and background of trees, was dim in the distance that Sanda's curtains parted. Max, riding the only horse in the party, saw the trembling of the rainbow-coloured stuff, and glanced up, expectant. He found that his heart and all his pulses were hammering, and as the girl's gold-brown head appeared, her veil thrown off, something seemed to leap in his breast, something that gave a bound like that of a great fish on a hook. She looked down and smiled at him rather sadly, yet more sweetly it seemed to Max than any other woman had ever smiled. He had not realized or remembered how beautiful she was. Why, it was the most exquisite face in the world! An angel's face, yet the face of a human girl. He adored it as a man may adore an angel, and he loved it as a man loves a woman. A great and irresistible tide of love rushed over him. What a fool, what a young, simple fool he had been to think that he had ever loved Billie Brookton! That seemed hundreds of years ago, in another incarnation, when he had been undeveloped, when his soul had been asleep. His soul was awake now! Something had awakened it; life in the Legion, perhaps, for that had begun to show him his own capabilities; or else love itself, which had been waiting to say: "I am here, now and forever."

Max was almost afraid to look at Sanda lest she should read through his eyes the words written on his heart. But then he remembered in a flash her love for Stanton, which would blind her to such feelings in other men. He felt sick for an instant in his hopelessness. Wherever he turned, whatever he did, happiness seemed never to be for him.

"You don't know how glad I am to see you!" the girl explained. "I've thought of you so often and—" she was going to add impulsively—"and dreamed about you, too!" but she remembered the Arab saying which Ourieda had told her: that when a woman dreams of a man, that is the man she loves. It was a silly saying, and untrue; yet she kept back the words in a queer sort of loyalty to Stanton—Stanton, who neither thought nor dreamed of her.

"I was so thankful when I heard my father had sent for me," she quickly went on. "I heard about it only through that letter—you know the one I mean."

"Yes, I know," said Max. "I felt they didn't mean to tell you till the last minute, though I could see no reason why. I—I was more than glad and proud to be the one to come."

He was not hoping unselfishly that Colonel DeLisle mightn't have told in his letter how the great march and the expected fight had been sacrificed for her sake. He was not hoping this, because in his sudden awakening to love he had forgotten the march. He was thinking of Sanda and the wild happiness that would turn to pain in memory of being with her for days in the desert. If, when he reached Sidi-bel-Abbes, he were blamed for the delay, and punished by losing his stripe, or even by prison, it would be nothing, or almost a joy, because he would be suffering for her.

"It was only to-day they gave me father's letter, which you brought," Sanda was saying. "It was short, written in a hurry, in answer to one I sent begging him to take me away. Yet he mentioned one thing: that he didn't order you, but only asked if you were willing, to come. And he told me what you answered. I can never thank you, but I do appreciate it—all!"

"It was my selfishness," answered Max. "I said that the colonel was giving me the Cross of the Legion of Honour. I felt that, then. I feel it a lot more now." There was more truth in this than he wished her to guess.

"You are the realest friend!" cried Sanda. "Why, do you know, now I come to think of it, unless I count my father, you are the only real friend I have in the world?"

"You forget Mr. Stanton!" Max reminded her, without intending to be cruel.

She blushed, and Max hated himself as if he had brought the colour to her face with a blow.

"No," she answered quietly. "I never forget him. But you understand, because I told you everything, that in my heart I can't call him my friend. He doesn't care enough, and I—care too much."

"Forgive me!" Max begged. "All the same I know he must care. He wouldn't be human not to."

"He isn't human! He's superhuman!" She laughed, to cover her pain of humiliation. "I suppose—long ago—he has started out on his wonderful mission. I keep thinking of him travelling on and on through the desert, and I pray he may be safe, and succeed in finding the Lost Oasis he believes in. He told me in Algiers that to find it would crown his life."

"He hadn't started when I left Touggourt," Max said rather dryly.

"What—he was still there? Then my father must have seen him. How strange! He didn't refer to him at all."

"You mentioned that the colonel wrote in a hurry." Max hinted at this explanation to comfort her, but he guessed why DeLisle had not been in a mood to speak of Stanton to his daughter. "There is a reason," he had said, "why I don't want to ask Stanton to put off starting and go to Djazerta." And Max, having seen the dancer, Ahmara, had known without telling what the reason was.

"Do you think Richard may be there when we get to Touggourt?" she asked, shamefaced, yet not able to resist putting the question.

"I think it's very likely." Max tried to keep his tone at reassuring level, though he hoped devoutly that Stanton might be gone. He could not bear to think of his seeing Sanda again after the Ahmara episode. With a man of Stanton's strange, erratic nature and wild impulses, who could be sure whether—but Max would not let the thought finish in his mind.

Sanda suddenly dropped the subject. Whether this was because she saw that Max disliked it, or whether she had no more to say, he could not guess.

"Tell me about yourself, now," she said. "My father has told me some things in letters, but I long to know from you if I made a mistake in wanting you to try the Legion."

"You made no mistake. It's one of the things I have to thank you for—one of several very great things," said Max.

"What other things? I can't think of one unless you thank me for having a splendid father."

"That's one thing."

"Are there more?"

"Yes."

"Tell me, please. Anyway, the greatest, or I shan't believe in any."

Max was silent for an instant. Then he said in a voice so low she could hardly hear it, bending down from her bassourah, "For giving me back my faith in women."

"I? But you hadn't lost it."

"I was in danger of losing it, with most of my mental and moral baggage. Through you—I've kept the lot."

"That's the most beautiful thing ever said to me. And it does me so much good after all I've gone through and been blamed for!"

"Who's dared to blame you for anything?"

"I asked you to tell me about yourself. When you have done that I'll tell you things that have happened here, things concerning Manoeel Valdez and Ourieda—poor darling Ourieda, whom I ought to be thinking of every instant! And so I am, only I can't help being happy to get away—with you."

There was sweet pain in hearing those last words, and the emphasis the caressing girl-voice gave. Max hurried through a vague list of such events as seemed fit for Sanda's ears. They were not many, since he did not count his fights among the mentionable ones. He told her, with more detail, about his acquaintance with Valdez, whose face she had remarked at the railway station at Sidi-bel-Abbes; and then claimed her promise. She must tell him, if she would (with a sudden drop from the happy way of Max Doran with women to the humbler way of Max St. George, Legionnaire), what she had gone through in the Agha's house.

She began by asking a question. "Didn't you think it queer that no one but a servant came out to see me off?"

"I did a little, but I put it down to Arab manners."

"It was because I left in disgrace. Oh! no one was ever rude! They were polite always. It was like being stuffed with too much honey. And I don't mean Ourieda, of course. Ourieda's a darling. I'd do anything for her. I've proved that! Did my father give you any idea why he had to send for me in a hurry, though he has to leave me alone—or rather in charge of people I don't know—at Bel-Abbes? He must have told you something, as he asked such a sacrifice."

"He needn't have told me anything at all. But he took me into his confidence—it was like him—far enough to say the Agha was offended somehow, and you were anxious to leave."

"I should think the Agha was offended! I tried to help Ourieda to escape, even though she hadn't heard from her Manoeel. She had lots of jewels, and thought she might get to France. We failed in our attempt, and after that we were never alone together, though they—her father and aunt—didn't want me to go till she was married. The idea at first was—when I arrived, I mean—that my visit shouldn't end till father came back. They meant me to stop on with Ourieda, as she and her husband would live at her old home at Djazerta. The last plot wasn't mine. It was got up by an old nurse they'd sent away, and a weird woman, a kind of Arab beauty-doctor. But all the same they were afraid of me. They longed to have me gone, yet, for their own superstitious, secretive reasons, they were afraid to let me go. As I had to stay so long, I'd rather have stopped a little longer, so as to know what becomes of Ourieda. They made me say good-bye to her in Tahar's tent, where she is waiting, all dressed up like a doll, till the hour at night when her husband chooses to come to her. Instead, we hope—— But I can hardly bear it, not to know! Shall we ever know?"

"It may be a long time before Manoeel can send us any word," said Max. "But we shall hear, I suppose, about Tahar."

"Oh, Manoeel doesn't mean to kill him, does he? Ourieda said he wouldn't do that! But Arab women are so strange, so different from us, I don't believe she'd care much if he did; except that if he were a murderer they could seize him, even in another country—Spain, where they both hope to go when they can get out of Djazerta."

"Manoeel wouldn't care much, either, except for that same reason," Max admitted. "But he does care for that. He intends only to surprise and stun Tahar. He doesn't want his life with Ourieda spoiled, for he'll be a public character, you know, if he succeeds in escaping from Algeria. He'll be a great singer. He can take back his own name."

"Why not France?" Sanda wanted to know. "Surely France would be better for a singer than Spain, or even Italy?"

"Perhaps, but, you see, he has had to desert from the Legion. In France he could be brought back to Algeria to the penal battalion."

"Oh, I hadn't thought of that!"

"It was—a hateful necessity, his deserting."

Sanda looked at him anxiously. "Will it make trouble for you?"

"Possibly. I hoped it needn't happen. But it had to. There was no other way in the end."

"How he must love Ourieda, to risk all that for her sake!"

"He risked a great deal more."

"What—but, oh, yes, you told me! The way he came into the Legion, and all that. I wonder—I wonder if there are many men in the world who would do as much for a woman?"

"I think so," said Max quietly. "You don't count the cost very much when you are in love."

He was to remember that speech before many days.

"They're wonderful, men like that!" Sanda murmured. "And there's more risk to come, for Ourieda and himself. A little for us, too, isn't there?"

"Not for you, please God! And very little for any of us. But I see you know what Manoeel expects to happen."

"Oh, yes, that they'll run after us, thinking that he has followed with Ourieda, to join our caravan. I do hope the Agha will send his men after us, for that will make us sure those two have got away. If we hear sounds of pursuit we'll hurry on quickly. Then the chase will have farther to go back, and Manoeel and Ourieda will gain time. The more ground we can cover before we're come up with by the Agha's camels, who'll be superior to ours, the better it will be, won't it?"

"Yes, for if the Agha lets Djazerta alone, Manoeel may contrive to slip out of the town sooner than he dared hope, well disguised, in a caravan of strangers not of Ben Raana's tribe. In that case the Agha of Djazerta would have no right to search among the women. And Manoeel's splendid at disguise. His actor's training has taught him that."

"I feel now that he will get Ourieda out of the country. They've suffered too much and dared too much to fail in the end."

"I hope so; I think so," Max answered. But he knew that in real life stories did sometimes end badly. His own, for instance. He could see no happy ending for that.

They pushed on as fast as the animals could go when a long march and not a mere spurt of speed was before them. Through the mysterious sapphire darkness of the desert night the padding feet of the camels strode noiselessly over the hard sand. Sanda asked Max to offer extra pay to the men if they would put up with an abbreviated rest. Only three hours they paused to sleep; and then, in the dusk before dawn, when all living things are as shadows, the camels were wakened to snarl with rage while their burdens were ruthlessly strapped on again. As Max gave Sanda a cup of hot coffee (which he had made for her, as Legionnaires make it, strong and black) she said, shivering a little, "Do you think they'll have found Tahar yet if—if——"

"Hardly yet! Not till daylight," answered Max. "Are you cold? These desert nights can be bitter, even in summer. Won't you let me put something more around you?"

"No, thanks. It's only excitement that makes me shiver. I'm thinking of Ourieda and Manoeel. I've been thinking of them instead of sleeping. But I'm not tired. I feel all keyed up; as if something wonderful were going to happen to me, too."

Something wonderful was happening to Max. But she had no idea of that. She would never know, he thought.

All day they journeyed on, save for a short halt at noon, and Max was happy. He tried to recall and quote to himself a verse of Tennyson's "Maud"—"Let come what come may; What matter if I go mad, I shall have had my day!" He was having his day—just that one day more, because on the next they would come to Touggourt, and if Stanton were there he would spoil everything.

At night they went on till late, as before; but the camel-men said that the animals must have a longer rest. Luckily it did not matter now if they were caught. If Manoeel and Ourieda had escaped they had had a long start. A little after midnight the vast silence of the sand-ocean was broken with cries and shoutings of men. The Arabs, not knowing of the expected raid, stumbled up from their beds of bagging and ran to protect the camels; but Max, who had not undressed, walked out from the little camp to meet a cavalcade of men.

Ben Raana himself rode in advance, mounted on a swift-running camel. In the blue gloom where the stars were night lights Max recognized the long black beard of the Agha flowing over his white cloak. None rode near him. Tahar was not there. Max took that as a good sign.

"Who are you?" demanded the uniformed Legionnaire in his halting Arabic. "In the name of France, I demand your business."

Ben Raana, recognizing him also, impatiently answered in French, "And I demand my daughter!"

"Your daughter? Ah, I see! It is the Agha of Djazerta. But what can we know of your daughter? We left her being married."

"I think thou knowest well," Ben Raana cut him short furiously, "that her marriage was not consummated. I cherished a viper in my bosom when I entertained in my house the child of George DeLisle. She has deceived me, and helped my daughter to deceive."

"I cannot hear Mademoiselle DeLisle spoken of in that way, even by my colonel's friend, sir," said Max. "If your daughter has run away——"

"If! Thou knowest well that she has run away with her lover, who has half murdered the man who should by now be her husband. Thou knowest and Mademoiselle knows!"

"You are mistaken," broke in Max, not troubling to hide his anger. "If you think your daughter——"

"I think she is here! But thou canst not protect her from me. Try, and thou and every man with thee shall perish."

"Search our camp," said Max.

As he spoke, Sanda appeared at the door of the mean little tent hired for her at Touggourt. From the shelter of the bassourah, close by on the sand, Khadra peeped out. The search was made quickly and almost without words. If the power of France had not been behind the soldier and the girl whom Ben Raana now hated, he would have reverted—"enlightened" man as he was—to primitive methods. He would have killed the pair with his own hand, while the men of his goum put the Arabs to death, and all could have been buried under the sand save the camels, which would have been led back to Djazerta. But France was mighty and far reaching, and he and his tribe would have to pay too high for such indulgence.

When he was sure that Ourieda and Manoeel Valdez were not concealed in the camp, with cold apologies and farewells he turned with his men and rode off toward the south—a band of shadows in the night. The visit had been like a dream, the desert dream that Sanda had had of Max, Max of Sanda. Yet dimly it seemed to both that these dreams had meant more than this. The girl let her "Soldier St. George" warm her small, icy hands, and comfort her with soothing words.

"You were not treacherous," he said. "You did exactly right. You deserve happiness for helping to make that girl happy. And you'll have it! You must! You shall! I couldn't stand your not being happy."

"Already it's to-day," she half whispered, "to-day that we come to Touggourt. The greatest thing in my father's life happened there. I thought of that when I passed through before, and wondered what would happen to me. Nothing happened. But—what about to-day?"

"May it be something very good," Max said steadily. But his heart was heavy, as in his hands her own grew warm.



CHAPTER XXIII

"WHERE THE STRANGE ROADS GO DOWN"

Shadows of evening flowed over the desert like blue water out of whose depths rose the golden crowns of the dunes. The caravan had still some miles of sand billows between them and Touggourt, when suddenly a faint thrill of sound, which might have been the waking dream of a tired brain, or a trick of wind, a sound scarcely louder than heart-throbs, grew definite and distinct: the distant beating of African drums, the shriek of raeitas, and the sighing of ghesbahs. The Arabs on their camels came crowding round Max, who led the caravan, riding beside Sanda's mehari.

"Sidi," said their leader, "this music is not of earth, for Touggourt is too distant for us to hear aught from there. It is the devil. It comes from under the dunes. Such music we have heard in the haunted desert where the great caravan was buried beneath the sands, but here it is the first time, and it is a warning of evil. Something terrible is about to happen. What shall we do—stop here and pray, though the sunset prayer is past, or go on?"

"Go on, of course," ordered Max. "As for the music, it must be that the wind brings it from Touggourt."

"It is not possible, Sidi," the camel-man, husband of Khadra, persisted. "Besides, there is no great feastday at this time, not even a wedding or a circumcision, or we should have heard before we started away that it was to be. Such playing, if from the hands of man, would mean some great event."

Even as he spoke the music grew louder and wilder. Max hurried the caravan on as fast as it could go among the sand billows, fearing that the Arabs' superstition might cause a stampede. With every stride of the camels' long, four-jointed legs, the music swelled; and at the crest of a higher dune than any they had climbed, Sanda, leaning out of her bassourah, gave a cry.

"A caravan—oh! but a huge caravan like an army," she exclaimed, "or like a troop of ghosts. What if—what if it should be Sir Knight just starting away?"

"I think it is he," Max answered heavily. "I think it must be Stanton getting off."

"We shall meet him. I can wish him good-bye and Godspeed! Soldier" (this was the name she had given Max), "it does seem as if heaven must have timed our coming and his going for this moment."

"Or the devil," Max amended bitterly in his heart. But aloud he said nothing. He knew that if he had spoken Sanda would not have heard him then.

"Let's hurry on," she begged, "and meet him—and surprise him. He can't be angry. He must be glad for father's sake, if not for mine. Oh! come, Soldier, come, or I will go alone!"

The man whose duty it was to guide her camel had dropped behind, as had often happened before at her wish and Max's order, for the mehari was a well-trained and gentle beast, knowing by instinct the right thing to do. Now Sanda leaned far out and touched him on the neck. Squatting in the way of camels brought up among dunes, he slid down the side of a big golden billow, sending up a spray of sand as he descended. Below lay a valley, where the blue dusk poured in its tide; and marching through the azure flood a train of dark forms advanced rhythmically, as if moving to the music which they had outstripped. It was a long procession of men and camels bearing heavy loads, so long that the end of it had not yet come into sight behind the next sand billow; but at its head a man rode on a horse, alone, with no one at his side. Already it was too dark to see his face, but Max knew who it was. He felt the man's identity with an instinct as unerring as Sanda's.

Also he longed to hasten after her and catch up with the running camel, as he could easily do, for his horse, though more delicate and not as enduring, could go faster. But, though Sanda had cried "Come!" he held back. She had hardly known what she said. She did not want him to be with her when she met Stanton; and if he—Max—wished to be there, it was a morbid wish. Whether Stanton were kind or unkind to the girl, he, the outsider, would suffer more than he need let himself suffer, since he was not needed and would only be in the way. Riding slowly and keeping back the men of his own little caravan, who wished to dash forward now their superstitious fears were put to flight, Max saw Stanton rein up his horse as the mehari, bearing a woman's bassourah, loped toward him; saw him stop in surprise, and then, no doubt recognizing the face framed by the curtains, jump off his horse and stride forward through the silky mesh of sand holding out his arms. The next instant he had the girl in them, was lifting her down without waiting for the camel to kneel, for she had sprung to him as if from the crest of a breaking wave; and Max bit back an oath as he had to see Ahmara's lover crush Sanda DeLisle against his breast.

It was only for an instant, perhaps, but for Max it was a red-hot eternity. He forgot his resolution to efface himself, and whipped his horse forward. By the time he had reached the two figures in the sand, however, the big, square-shouldered man in khaki and the slim girl in white had a little space between them. Stanton had released Sanda from his arms and set her on her feet; but he held both the little white hands in his brown ones; and now that Max was near he could see a look on the square sunburnt face which might have won any woman, even if she had not been his in heart already. Max himself was thrilled by it. He realized as he had realized in Algiers, but a thousand times more keenly, the vital, compelling magnetism of the man.

No need for Sanda to wonder whether "Sir Knight" would be glad to see her! He was glad, brutally glad it seemed to Max, as the lion might be glad after long, lonely ways to chance upon his young and willing mate.

"Curse him! How dare he look at her like that, after Ahmara!" thought Max. His blood sang in his ears like the wicked voice of the raeita following the caravan. All that was in him of primitive man yearned to dash between the two and snatch Sanda from Stanton. But the soldier in him, which discipline and modern conventions had made, held him back. Sanda was Mademoiselle DeLisle, the daughter of his colonel. He who had been Max Doran was now nobody save Maxime St. George, a little corporal in the Foreign Legion, with hardly enough money left to buy cigarettes. Ahmara had been an episode. Now the episode was over, and in all probability Sanda, like most women, would have forgiven it if she knew. She was happy in Stanton's overmastering look. She did not feel it an insult, or dream that the devouring flame in the blue eyes was only a spurt of new fire in the ashes of a burnt-out passion.

She must be mistaking it for love, and her heart must be shaken to ecstasy by the surprise and joy of the miracle. Max knew that if he rudely rode up to them in this, Sanda's great moment, nothing he could say or do would really part them, even if he were cad enough to speak of Ahmara, the dancer. Sanda would not believe, or else she would not care; and always, for the rest of her life, she would hate him. He pulled up his horse as he thought, and sat as though he were in chains. He was, according to his reckoning, out of earshot, but Stanton's deep baritone had the carrying power of a 'cello. Max heard it say in a tone to reach a woman's heart: "Child! You come to me like a white dove. God bless you! I needed you. I don't know whether I can let you go."

Slowly Max turned his horse's head, and still more slowly rode back to the caravan which he had halted fifty feet away. For an instant he hoped against hope that Sanda would hear the sound of his going, that she would look after him and call. But deep down in himself he knew that no girl in her place, feeling as she felt, would have heard a cannon-shot. He explained to the astonished men that this was the great explorer, the Sidi who found new countries where no other white men had ever been, and the young Roumia lady had known him ever since she was a child. The Sidi was starting out on a dangerous expedition, and it was well that chance had brought them together, for now the daughter of the explorer's oldest friend could bid him good-bye. They must wait until the farewell had been given, then they would go on again.

The camel-men assented politely, without comment. But Max heard Khadra say to her husband, "It is the Sidi who loved Ahmara. One would think he had forgotten her now. Or is it that he tries this way to forget?"

Max wished angrily that his ears were less quick, and that he had not such a useless facility for picking up words out of every patois.

Half an hour passed, and the blue shadows deepened to purple. It was night, and Touggourt miles away. Still the two were talking, and the darkness had closed around them like the curtains of a tent. They had halted not only the little caravan returning from the south, but the great caravan starting for the far southeast. Nothing was of importance to Stanton and Sanda except each other and themselves. Max hated Stanton, yet was fascinated by the thought of him: virile, magnetic, compelling; a man among men; greater than his fellows, as the great stars above, flaming into life, were brighter than their dim brothers.

The music, which still throbbed and screamed its notes of passion in the desert, seemed to be beating in Max's brain. A horrible irritation possessed him like a devil. He could have yelled as a man might yell in the extremity of physical torture. If only that music would stop!

When he had almost reached the limit of endurance there came a soft padding of feet in the sand and a murmur of voices. Then he saw Stanton walking toward him with the girl. Sanda called to him timidly, yet with a quiver of excitement in her voice:

"Monsieur St. George, mon ami!"

Not "Soldier" now! That phase was over. Max got off his horse and walked to meet the pair.

"You know each other," Sanda said. "I introduced you last March in Algiers. And perhaps you met again here in Touggourt with my father, not many days ago. I've told Mr. Stanton all about you now, mon ami; he knows how good you have been. He knows how I—confided things to you I never told to anybody else. Do you remember, Monsieur St. George, my saying how, when I was small, I used to long to run away dressed like a boy, and go on a desert journey with Richard Stanton? Well, my wish has come true! Not about the boy's clothes, but—I am going with him! He has asked me to be his wife, and I have said 'yes.'"



CHAPTER XXIV

THE MAD MUSIC

Max was struck dumb by the shock. He had expected nothing so devastating as this. What to do he knew not, yet something he must do. If he had not loved the girl, it would have been easier. There would have been no fear then that he might think of himself and not of her. Yet she had been put under his charge by Colonel DeLisle. He was responsible for her welfare and her safety. Ought he to constitute himself her guardian and stand between her and this man? On the other hand, could he attempt playing out a farce of guardianship—he, almost a stranger, and a boy compared to Stanton, who had been, according to Sanda, informally her guardian when she was a little girl? Max stammered a few words, not knowing what he said, or whether he were speaking sense, but Stanton paid him the compliment of treating him like a reasonable man. Suddenly Max became conscious that the explorer was deliberately focussing upon him all the intense magnetism which had won adherents to the wildest schemes.

"I understand exactly what you are thinking about me," Stanton said. "You must feel I am mad or a brute to want this child to go with me across the desert, to share the fate all Europe is prophesying."

"It's glory to share it," broke in Sanda, in a voice like a harp. "Do I care what happens to me if I can be with you?"

Stanton laughed a delightful laugh.

"She is a child—an infatuated child! But shouldn't I be more—or less—than a man, if I could let such a stroke of luck pass by me? You see, she wants to go."

"He knows I love you, and have loved you all my life," said Sanda. "I told him in Algiers when I was so miserable, thinking that I should never see you again, and that you didn't care."

"Of course I cared," Stanton contradicted her warmly; yet there was a difference in his tone. To Max's ears, it did not ring true. "Seeing a grown-up Sanda, when I'd always kept in my mind's eye a little girl, bowled me over. I made excuses to get away in a hurry, didn't I? It was the bravest thing I ever did. I knew I wasn't a marble statue. But it was another thing keeping my head in broad daylight on the terrace of a hotel, with a lot of dressed-up creatures coming and going, from what it is here in the desert at night, with that mad music playing me away into the unknown, and a girl like Sanda flashing down like a falling star."

"The star fell into your arms, and you saved it from extinction," she finished for him, laughing a little gurgling laugh of ecstasy.

"I caught it on its way somewhere else! But how can I let it go when it wants to shine for me? How can I be expected to let it go? I ask you that, St. George!"

Racked with an anguish of jealousy, Max felt, nevertheless, a queer stirring of sympathy for the man; and struggling against it, he knew Stanton's conquering fascination. He knew, also, that nothing he could do or say would prevent Sanda from going with her hero. However, he stammered a protest.

"But—but I don't see what's to be done," he said, "Mademoiselle DeLisle's father, my colonel, ordered me to take her to Sidi-bel-Abbes."

"Not ordered; asked!" the girl cut in with an unfairness that hurt.

"All the blame is mine," Stanton assured him with a warm friendliness of manner. "My shoulders are broad enough to bear it. And you know, St. George, your colonel and I are old friends. If he were here he'd give his consent, I think, after he'd got over his first surprise. I believe as his proxy you'll do the same, when you've taken a little time to reflect."

"Why, of course he will!" cried Sanda, sweet and repentant. "He knows that this is my one chance of happiness in life. Everything looked so gray in the future. I was going to Sidi-bel-Abbes to be with strangers till my father came. And even at best, though he loves me, I am a burden and a worry to him. Then, suddenly, comes this glorious joy! My Knight, my one Sir Knight, wants me, and cares! If I knew I were going straight to death, I'd go just the same, and just as joyously."

"We both realized what was in our hearts, and what must happen, when she looked out between her curtains like the Blessed Damozel, and I took her out of her bassourah and held her in my arms. That settled our fate," said Stanton, attractively boyish and eager in the warmth of his passion. It was genuine passion. There was no doubting that, but lit in an instant, like a burnt wick still warm from a flame blown out. How long would it last? How clear and true a light would it give? Max did not know how much of his doubt of Stanton was jealousy, how much regard for Sanda's happiness.

"To think this should come to me at Touggourt, where my father's happiness came to him!" Sanda murmured rapturously, as Max stood silent. "It is Fate, indeed!"

"Listen to the music of Africa," said Stanton. "The players followed us for 'luck.' What luck they've brought! Child, I was feeling lonely and sad. I almost had a presentiment that my luck was out. What a fool! All the strength and courage I've ever had you've given back to me with yourself!"

"I could die of happiness to hear you say that!" Sanda answered. "You see how it is, my friend, my dear, kind soldier? God has timed my coming here to give me this wonderful gift! You wouldn't rob me of it if you could, would you?"

"Not if it's for your happiness," Max heard something that was only half himself answer. "But"—and he turned on Stanton—"how do you propose to marry her—here?"

The other hesitated for an instant, then replied briskly, as if he had calculated everything in detail. This was characteristic of him, to map out a plan of campaign as he went along, as fast as he drew breath for the rushing words. Often he had made his greatest impressions, his greatest successes, in this wild way.

"Why, you will pitch your camp here for the night, instead of marching on to Touggourt," he said. "I camp here, too. My expedition is delayed for one day more, but what does that matter after a hundred delays? Heavens! I've had to wait for tents a beast of a Jew contracted to give me and didn't. I've waited to test water-skins. I've waited for new camel-men when old ones failed me. Haven't I a right to wait a few hours for a companion—a wife? The first thing in the morning we'll have the priest out from Touggourt. Sanda's Catholic. He'll marry us and we'll start on together."

"Couldn't we," the girl rather timidly ventured the suggestion, "couldn't we go to Touggourt? There must be a church there if there's a priest, and I—I'd like to be married in a church."

"My darling child! The priest shall consecrate a tent, or a bit of the desert," Stanton answered with decision, which, she must have realized, would be useless to combat. "He'll do it all right! Marriage ceremonies are performed by Catholic priests in houses, you know, if the man or the woman is ill; deathbed marriages, and—but don't let us talk of such things! I know I can make him do this when I show him how impossible it would be for us to go back to Touggourt. Why, the men I've got together, mostly blacks, would take it for a bad omen if I left the escort stranded here in the desert the first day out! Half of them would bolt. I'd have the whole work to do over again. You see that, don't you?"

Sanda did see; and even Max admitted to himself that the excuse was plausible. Yet he suspected another reason behind the one alleged. Stanton was afraid of things Sanda might hear in Touggourt; perhaps he feared some more active peril.

"I thought," Max dared to argue, "that it took days arranging the legal part of a marriage? You're an Englishman, Mr. Stanton, and Colonel DeLisle's daughter's a French subject, though she is half British. You may find difficulties."

"Damn difficulties!" exclaimed Stanton, all his savage impatience of opposition breaking out at last. "Don't you say so, Sanda? When a man and woman need each other's companionship in lonely places outside the world, is the world's red tape going to make a barrier between them? My God, no! Sanda, if your church will give you to me, and send us into the desert with its blessing, is it, or is it not, enough for you? If not, you're not the girl I want. You're not my woman."

"If you love me, I am 'your woman,'" said Sanda.

"You hear her?" Stanton asked. "If it's enough for her, I suppose it's enough for you, St. George?"

Through the blue dusk two blue eyes stared into Max's face. They put a question without words. "Have you any reason of your own for wanting to keep her from me?"

"Will it be enough for Colonel DeLisle?" Max persisted.

"I promised to shoulder all responsibility with him," repeated Stanton.

"And father would be the last man in the world to spoil two lives for a convention," Sanda added. "Do you remember his love story that I told you?"

Did Max remember? It was not a story to forget, that tragic tale of love and death in the desert. Must the story of the daughter be tragic, too? A great fear for the girl was in his heart. He believed that he could think of her alone, now, apart from selfishness. Realizing her worship of Stanton, had her fate lain in his hands he would have placed it in those of the other man could he have been half sure they would be tender. But her fate was in her own keeping. He could do no more than beg, for DeLisle's sake, that they would wait for the wedding until Stanton came back from his expedition. Even as he spoke, it seemed strange and almost absurd that he should be urging legal formalities upon any one, especially a man like Stanton, almost old enough to be his father. What, after all, did law matter in the desert if two people loved each other? And as Stanton said—patient and pleasant again after his outburst—they could have all the legal business, to make things straight in the silly eyes of the silly world, when they won through to Egypt, under English law.

The matter settled itself exactly as it would have settled itself had Max stormed protests for an hour. Sanda was to be married by the Catholic priest from Touggourt, as early in the morning as he could be fetched. The great caravan and the little caravan halted for the night. Stanton harangued his escort in their own various dialects, for there was no obscure lingo of Africa which he did not know, and this knowledge gave him much of his power over the black or brown men. The news he told, explaining the delay, was received with wild shouts of amused approval. Stanton was allowing some of his head men to travel with their wives, it being their concern, not his, if the women died and rotted in the desert. It was his concern only to be popular as a leader on this expedition for which it had been hard to get recruits. It was fair that he, too, should have a wife if he wanted one, and the men cared as little what became of the white girl they had not seen as Stanton cared about the fate of their strapping females.

The mad music of the tomtoms and raeitas played as Max, with his own hands, set up Sanda's little tent. "For the last time," he said to himself. "To-morrow night her tent will be Stanton's."

He felt physically sick as he thought of leaving her in the desert with that man, whom they called mad, and going on alone to report at Sidi-bel-Abbes, days after his leave had expired. Now that Sanda was staying behind, his best excuse was taken from him. He could hear himself making futile-sounding explanations, but keeping Mademoiselle DeLisle's name in the background. None save a man present at the scene he had gone through could possibly pardon him for abandoning his charge. After all, however, what did it matter? He did not care what became of him, even if his punishment were to be years in the African penal battalion, the awful Bat d'Aff, a sentence of death in life. "Perhaps I deserve it," he said. "I don't know!" All he did know was that he would give his life for Sanda. Yet it seemed that he could do nothing.

When all was quiet he went to his tent and threw himself down just inside the entrance with the flap up. Lying thus, he could see Sanda's tent not far away, dim in the starlit night. He could not see her, nor did he wish to. But he knew she was sitting in the doorway with Stanton at her feet. Max did not mean to spy; but he was afraid for her, of Stanton, while that music played. At last he heard her lover in going call out "good night," then it was no longer necessary to play sentinel, but though Sanda had slipped inside her tent, perhaps to dream of to-morrow, it seemed to Max that there were no drugs in the world strong enough to give him sleep. He supposed, vaguely, that if a priest consented to marry the girl to Stanton, after the wedding and the start of the explorer's caravan, he, Max, would board the first train he could catch on the new railway, and go to "take his medicine" at Sidi-bel-Abbes.

Before dawn, when Stanton came to tell Sanda that he was off for Touggourt to fetch the priest, no alternative had yet presented itself to Max's mind, and he was still indifferent to his own future. But when Stanton had been gone for half an hour, and a faint primrose coloured flame had begun to quiver along the billowy horizon in the east, he heard a soft voice call his name, almost in a whisper.

"Soldier St. George!" it said.

Max sprang up, fully dressed as he was, and went out of his tent. Sanda was standing near, a vague shape of glimmering white.



CHAPTER XXV

CORPORAL ST. GEORGE, DESERTER

"Is anything the matter?" he asked. A wild hope was in his heart that she might wish to tell him she had changed her mind. The joy of that hope snatched his breath away. But her first words put it to flight.

"No, nothing is the matter, except that I've been thinking about you. I could hardly wait to ask you some things. But I had to wait till morning. It is morning now that Richard is up and has gone, even though it isn't quite light. And it's better to talk before he comes back. There'll be—so much happening then—— You're all dressed! You didn't go to bed."

"No, I didn't want to sleep," said Max.

"I haven't slept, either. I didn't try to sleep! I'm so happy for myself, but I'm not all happy. I'm anxious about you. I see that I've been horribly, hatefully selfish—a beast!"

"Don't! I won't hear you say such things."

"You mustn't try and put me off. Will you promise by—by your love for my father—and your friendship for me, to answer truly the questions I ask?"

"All I can answer."

"If you don't answer, I shall know what your silence means. Mon ami, you made a great sacrifice for me. You gave up your march to take me safely to Bel-Abbes. You had only eight days' leave to do it in. I know, because my father said so in his letter. But I, thinking always of myself, gave no thought to that. You lost time coming back from Djazerta to the douar. Now I've kept you another night. Is there a train to-morrow going out of Touggourt?"

"I think so," said Max warily, beginning to guess the trend of her questions.

"What time does it start?"

"I don't know precisely."

"In the morning or at night?"

"I really can't tell."

"You mean you won't. But that does tell me, all the same. It goes in the morning. Soldier, I've made you late. I see now you've been very anxious all the time about overstaying your leave, but you wouldn't speak because it was for my sake."

"I've written to the officer in command at Sidi-bel-Abbes, explaining. It will be all right."

"It won't! You're keeping the truth from me. I see by your face. You've overstayed your leave already. I calculated it out last night. Even as it is, you are a day late."

"What of it? There's nothing to worry about."

"Do you suppose I can be a soldier's daughter and not have learned anything about army life? Soldier, much as I'd want you to stand by me if it could be right for you, it isn't right, and you must go! Go now, and be in time for that train this morning. One day late won't be so bad. But there won't be another train till Monday. By diligence, it's two days to Biskra. That means—oh! go, my friend! Go, and forgive me! Let us say good-bye now!"

"Not for the world," Max answered. "Not if they'd have me shot at Bel-Abbes, instead of putting me into cellule for a few days at worst. Nothing would induce me to leave you until"—he choked a little on the words—"until you're married."

"Cellule" she echoed. "You, in cellule! And your corporal's stripe? You'll lose it!"

"What if I do? I value it more for—for something Colonel DeLisle said than for itself."

"I know you were an officer in your American army at home. To be a corporal must seem laughable to you. And yet, the stripe is more than just a mere stripe. It's an emblem."

"I didn't mean you to think that I don't value it! I do! But I value other things more."

Day was quickening to life; Sanda's wedding day. In the wan light that bleached the desert they looked at each other, their faces pale. Max could not take his eyes from hers. She held them, and he felt her drawing from them the truth his lips refused to speak.

"You are like a man going to his death," she sobbed. "Oh, what have I done? It will be something worse, a thousand times worse, than cellule. Mon Dieu! I know what they do to men of the Legion when they've deserted—even if they come back. I implore you to go away now. Do you want me to beg you on my knees?"

"For God's sake, Mademoiselle DeLisle!"

"Then will you go?"

"No! I told you nothing could make me leave you till—after it's over. What would be the use anyhow, even if I would go? If they're going to call me a deserter, I'm that already."

"Ah!" she hid her face in her hands, shivering with sobs. "I've made you a deserter. I've ruined you! Your career my father hoped for! If he were at Bel-Abbes he'd save you. But he's far away in the desert." The girl lifted her face and brushed away the tears. "Soldier, if you don't go now, don't go at all! Don't offer yourself up to punishment for what is not your fault, but mine, the fault of your colonel's daughter. Stay with me—stay with us! Keep the trust my father gave you, watching over me. Will you do that? Will you, instead of going back straight to prison and spoiling your life? Join us and help us to find the Lost Oasis."

The young man's blood rushed to his head. He could not speak. He could only look at her.

"You say that already you've made yourself a deserter," she went on. "Then desert to us, I wanted you to join the Legion, and you did join; so I've called you 'my soldier.' Now I want you not to go back to the Legion. It would be a horrible injustice for you to be punished as you would be. I couldn't be happy even with Richard, thinking of you in prison."