The Sheik

"Bon soir, Monseigneur."

"Bon soir, Gaston."

Diana drew a quick breath. While the man was still in the adjoining room the moment for which she was waiting seemed interminable. And now she wished he had not gone. He stood between her and—what? For the first time since the coming of Saint Hubert she was alone with him, really alone. Only a curtain separated them, a curtain that she could not pass. She longed to go to him, but she did not dare. She was pulled between love and fear, and for the moment fear was in the ascendant. She shivered, and a sob rose in her throat as the memory came to her of another night during those two months of happiness, that were fast becoming like a wonderful dream, when he had ridden in late. After Gaston left she had gone to him, flushed and bright-eyed with sleep, and he had pulled her down on to his knee, and made her share the native coffee she detested, laughing boyishly at her face of disgust. And, holding her in his arms with her head on his shoulder, he had told her all the incidents of the day's visit to one of the other camps, and from his men and his horses drifted almost insensibly into details connected with his own plans for the future, which were really the intimate confidences of a husband to a wife who is also a comrade. The mingled pain and pleasure of the thought had made her shiver, and he had started up, declaring that she was cold, and, lifting her till his cheek was resting on hers, carried her back into the other room.

But what she had done then was impossible now. He seemed so utterly strange, so different from the man whom she thought she had grown to understand. She was all at sea. She was desperately tired, her head aching and confused with the terrible problems of the future. She dared not think any more. She only wanted to lie in his arms and sob her heart out against his. She was starving for the touch of his hands, suffering horribly.

She slid down on to her knees, burying her face in the couch.

"Oh, God! Give me his love!" she kept whispering in agonised entreaty, until the recollection of the night, months before, when in the same posture she had prayed that God's curse might fall on him, sent a shudder through her.

"I didn't mean if," she moaned. "Oh, clear God! I didn't mean it. I didn't know…. Take it back. I didn't mean it."

She choked down the sobs that rose, pressing her face closer into the silken coverings.

There was silence in the next room except for the striking of a match that came with monotonous regularity. And always the peculiar scent of his tobacco drifting in through the heavy curtains, forcing a hundred recollections with the association of its perfume. Why didn't he come to her? Did he know how he was torturing her? Was he so utterly indifferent that he did not care what she suffered? Did he even think of her, to wonder if she suffered or not? The fear of the future rushed on her again with overwhelming force. The uncertainty was killing her. She raised her head and looked at the travelling clock beside the reading-lamp. It was an hour since Gaston had left him. Another hour of waiting would drive her mad. She must know what he was going to do. She could bear anything but this suspense. She had reached the limit of her endurance. She struggled to her feet, drawing the thin wrap closer around her. But even then she stood irresolute, dreading the fulfilling of her fears; she had not the courage voluntarily to precipitate her fate. She clung to her fool's paradise. Her eyes were fixed on the clock, watching the hands drag slowly round the dial. A quarter of an hour crept past. It seemed the quarter of a lifetime, and Diana brushed her hand across her eyes to clear away the dazzling reflection of the staring white china face with its long black minute hand. No sound of any kind came now from the other room. The silence was driving her frantic. She was desperate; she must know, nothing could be worse than the agony she was enduring.

She set her teeth and, crossing the room, slipped noiselessly between the curtains. Then she shrank back suddenly with her hands over her mouth. He was leaning forward on the divan, his elbows on his knees, his face hidden in his hands. And it was as a stranger that he had come back to her, divested of the flowing robes that had seemed essentially a part of him; an unfamiliar figure in silk shirt, riding breeches and high brown boots, still dust-covered from the long ride. A thin tweed coat lay in a heap on the carpet—he must have flung it off after Gaston went, for the valet, with his innate tidiness, would never have left it lying on the floor.

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.