The Sheik

She fought against the fascination with which they dominated her, resisting him dumbly with tight-locked lips till he held her palpitating in his arms.

"Little fool," he said with a deepening smile. "Better me than my men."

The gibe broke her silence.

"Oh, you brute! You brute!" she wailed, until his kisses silenced her.

CHAPTER IV

"A month! Thirty-one days! Oh, God! Only thirty-one days. It seems a lifetime. Only a month since I left Biskra. A month! A month!"

Diana flung herself on to her face, burying her head deeply into the cushions of the divan, shutting out from her sight the barbaric luxury of her surroundings, shuddering convulsively. She did not cry. The complete breakdown of the first night had never been repeated. Tears of shame and anger had risen in her eyes often, but she would not let them fall. She would not give her captor the satisfaction of knowing that he could make her weep. Her pride was dying hard. Her mind travelled back slowly over the days and nights of anguished revolt, the perpetual clash of will against will, the enforced obedience that had made up this month of horror. A month of experience of such bitterness that she wondered dully how she still had the courage to rebel. For the first time in her life she had had to obey. For the first time in her life she was of no account. For the first time she had been made conscious of the inferiority of her sex. The training of years had broken down under the experience. The hypothetical status in which she had stood with regard to Aubrey and his friends was not tolerated here, where every moment she was made to feel acutely that she was a woman, forced to submit to everything to which her womanhood exposed her, forced to endure everything that he might put upon her—a chattel, a slave to do his bidding, to bear his pleasure and his displeasure, shaken to the very foundation of her being with the upheaval of her convictions and the ruthless violence done to her cold, sexless temperament. The humiliation of it seared her proud heart. He was pitiless in his arrogance, pitiless in his Oriental disregard of the woman subjugated. He was an Arab, to whom the feelings of a woman were non-existent. He had taken her to please himself and he kept her to please himself, to amuse him in his moments of relaxation.

To Diana before she had come to Africa the life of an Arab Sheik in his native desert had been a very visionary affair. The term sheik itself was elastic. She had been shown Sheiks in Biskra who drove hard bargains to hire out mangy camels and sore-covered donkeys for trips into the interior. Her own faithless caravan-leader had called himself "Sheik." But she had heard also of other and different Sheiks who lived far away across the shimmering sand, powerful chiefs with large followings, who seemed more like the Arabs of her imaginings, and of whose lives she had the haziest idea. When not engaged in killing their neighbours she visualized them drowsing away whole days under the influence of narcotics, lethargic with sensual indulgence. The pictures she had seen had been mostly of fat old men sitting cross-legged in the entrance of their tents, waited on by hordes of retainers, and looking languidly, with an air of utter boredom, at some miserable slave being beaten to death.

She had not been prepared for the ceaseless activity of the man whose prisoner she was. His life was hard, strenuous and occupied. His days were full, partly with the magnificent horses that he bred, and partly with tribal affairs that took him from the camp for hours at a time. Upon one or two occasions he had been away for the whole night and had come back at daybreak with all the evidences of hard riding. Some days she rode with him, but when he had not the time or the inclination, the French valet went with her. A beautiful grey thoroughbred called Silver Star was kept for her use, and sometimes on his back she was able to forget for a little time. So the moments of relaxation were less frequent than they might have been, and it was only in the evenings when Gaston had come and gone for the last time and she was alone with the Sheik that an icy hand seemed to close down over her heart. And, according to his mood, he noticed or ignored her. He demanded implicit obedience to his lightest whim with the unconscious tyranny of one who had always been accustomed to command. He ruled his unruly followers despotically, and it was obvious that while they loved him they feared him equally. She had even seen Yusef, his lieutenant, cringe from the heavy scowl that she had, herself, learned to dread.

"You treat them like dogs," she said to him once. "Are you not afraid that one day they will rise against you and murder you?"

And he had only shrugged his shoulders and laughed, the same low laugh of amusement that never failed to make her shiver.

The only person whose devotion seemed untinged by any conflicting sentiment was the French valet, Gaston.