She looked at him hungrily, her eyes ranging slowly over the long length of him and lingering on his bent head. The light from the hanging lamp shone on his thick brown hair burnishing it like bronze. She was shaking with a sudden new shyness, but love gave her courage and she went to him, her bare feet noiseless on the rugs.

"Ahmed!" she whispered.

He lifted his head slowly and looked at her, and the sight of his face sent her on to her knees beside him, her hands clutching the breast of his soft shirt.

"Ahmed! What is it? … You are hurt—your wound–?" she cried, her voice sharp with anxiety.

He caught her groping hands, and rising, pulled her gently to her feet, his fingers clenched round hers, looking down at her strangely. Then he turned from her without a word, and wrenching open the flap of the tent, flung it back and stood in the open doorway staring out into the right. He looked oddly slender and tall silhouetted against the darkness. A gleam of perplexity crept into her frightened eyes, and one hand went up to her throat.

"What is it?" she whispered again breathlessly.

"It is that we start for Oran to-morrow," he replied. His voice sounded dull and curiously unlike, and with a little start Diana realised that he was speaking in English. Her eyes closed and she swayed dizzily.

"You are sending me away?" she gasped slowly.

There was a pause before he answered.

"Yes."

The curt monosyllable lashed her like a whip. She reeled under it, panting and wild-eyed. "Why?"

He did not answer and the colour flamed suddenly into her face. She went closer to him, her breast heaving, trying to speak, but her throat was parched and her lips shaking so that no words would come.

"It is because you are tired of me?" she muttered at last hoarsely, "—as you told me you would tire, as you tired of—those other women?" Her voice died away with an accent of horror in it.

Again he did not answer, but he winced, and his hands that were hanging at his sides clenched slowly.

Diana flung one arm across her face to shut him out from her sight. Her heart was breaking, and she longed with a feeling of sick misery to crawl to his feet, but a remnant of pride kept her back.

He spoke at length in the same level, toneless voice. "I will take you to the first desert station outside of Oran, where you can join the train. For your own sake I must not be seen with you in Oran, as I am known there. If you should by any chance be recognised or your identity should leak out, you can say that for reasons of your own you extended your trip, that your messages miscarried, anything that occurs to you. But it is not at all likely to happen. There are many travellers passing through Oran. Gaston can do all business and make all arrangements for you. He will take you to Marseilles, and if you need him he will go with you to Paris, Cherbourg, or London—whichever you wish. As you know, you can trust him absolutely. When you do not need him any longer, he will come back to me. I—I will not trouble you any more. You need never be afraid that I will come into your life again. You can forget these months in the desert and the uncivilised Arab who crossed your path. To keep out of your way is the only amends I can make."

She flung up her head. Quick, suspicious jealousy and love and pride contending nearly choked her. "Why don't you speak the truth?" she cried wildly. "Why don't you say what you really mean?—that you have no further use for me, that it amused you to take me and torture me to satisfy your whim, but the whim is passed. It does not amuse you any longer. You are tired of me and so you get rid of me with all precautions. Do you think the truth can hurt me? Nothing that you can do can hurt me now. You made me the vile thing I am for your pleasure, and now for your pleasure you throw me on one side…. How many times a year does Gaston take your discarded mistresses back to France?" Her voice broke into a terrible laugh.

He swung round swiftly and flung his arms about her, crushing her to him savagely, forgetting his strength, his eyes blazing. "God! Do you think it is easy to let you go, that you are taunting me like this? Do you think I haven't suffered, that I'm not suffering now? Don't you know that it is tearing my heart out by the roots to send you away? My life will be hell without you. Do you think I haven't realised what an infinitely damned brute I've been? I didn't love you when I took you, I only wanted you to satisfy the beast in me. And I was glad that you were English that I could make you suffer as an Englishman made my mother suffer, I so loathed the whole race. I have been mad all my life, I think—up till now. I thought I didn't care until the night I heard that Ibraheim Omair had got you, and then I knew that if anything happened to you the light of my life was out, and that I would only wait to kill Ibraheim before I killed myself."

His arms were like a vice hurting her, but they felt like heaven, and she clung to him speechless, her heart throbbing wildly. He looked down long and deeply into her eyes, and the light in his—the light that she had longed for—made her tremble. His brown head bent lower and lower, and his lips had almost touched her when he drew back, and the love in his eyes faded into misery.

"I mustn't kiss you," he said huskily, as he put her from him gently. "I don't think I should have the courage to let you go if I did. I didn't mean to touch you."

He turned from her with a little gesture of weariness.

Fear fled back into her eyes. "I don't want to go," she whispered faintly.

He paused by the writing-table and took up the revolver he had loaded earlier, breaking it absently, spinning the magazine between his finger and thumb, and replaced it before answering.

"You don't understand. There is no other way," he said dully.

"If you really loved me you would not let me go," she cried, with a miserable sob.

"If I loved you?" he echoed, with a hard laugh. "If I loved you! It is because I love you so much that I am able to do it. If I loved you a little less I would let you stay and take your chance."

She flung out her hands appealingly. "I want to stay, Ahmed! I love you!" she panted, desperate—for she knew his obstinate determination, and she saw her chance of happiness slipping away.

He did not move or look at her, and his brows drew together in the dreaded heavy frown. "You don't know what you are saying. You don't know what it would mean," he replied in a voice from which he had forced all expression. "If you married me you would have to live always here in the desert. I cannot leave my people, and I am—too much of an Arab to let you go alone. It would be no life for you. You think you love me now, though God knows how you can after what I have done to you, but a time would come when you would find that your love for me did not compensate for your life here. And marriage with me is unthinkable. You know what I am and what I have been. You know that I am not fit to live with, not fit to be near any decent woman. You know what sort of a damnable life I have led; the memory of it would always come between us—you would never forget, you would never trust me. And if you could, of your charity, both forgive and forget, you know that I am not easy to live with. You know my devilish temper—it has not spared you in the past, it might not spare you in the future. Do you think that I could bear to see you year after year growing to hate me more? You think that I am cruel now, but I am thinking what is best for you afterwards. Some day you will think of me a little kindly because I had the strength to let you go. You are so young, your life is only just beginning. You are strong enough to put the memory of these last months out of your mind—to forget the past and live only for the future. No one need ever know. There can be no fear for your—reputation. Things are forgotten in the silence of the desert. Mustafa Ali is many hundreds of miles away, but not so far that he would dare to talk. My own men need not be considered, they speak or are silent as I wish. There is only Raoul, and there is no question of him. He has not spared me his opinion. You must go back to your own country, to your own people, to your own life, in which I have no place or part, and soon all this will seem only like an ugly dream."

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