The Sheik

He let her go and got up with a yawn, watching her approvingly as she crossed the tent. The easy swing of her boyish figure and the defiant carriage of her head reminded him of one of his own thoroughbred horses. She was as beautiful and as wild as they were. And as he broke them so would he break her. She was nearly tamed now, but not quite, and by Allah! it should be quite! As he turned his foot struck against the jade necklace lying on the rug where she had thrown it. He picked it up and called her back. She came reluctantly, slowly, with mutinous eyes.

He held out the necklace silently, and silently she stared not at it but at him. Her heart began to beat faster, and the colour slowly left her face. "Take it. I wish it," he said quietly.

"No." It was little more than a gasp.

"You will wear it to please me," he went on in the same soft voice, and the old hateful mockery crept into his eyes, "to please my artistic soul. I have an artistic soul even though I am only an Arab."

"I will not!"

The mockery was wiped out of his eyes in a flash, giving place to the usual ferocity, and his forehead knit in the dreaded heavy scowl. "Diane, obey me!"

She clenched her teeth on her lower lip until a rim of blood stained their whiteness. If he would only shout or bluster like the average angry man she felt that she could brave him longer, but the cold quiet rage that characterised him always was infinitely more sinister, and paralysed her with its silent force. She had never heard him raise his voice in anger or quicken his usual slow, soft tone, but there was an inflection that came into his voice and a look that came into his eyes that was more terrible than any outburst. She had seen his men shrink when, standing near him, she had barely been able to hear what he had said. She had seen a look from him silence a clamorous quarrel that had broken out among his followers too close to his own tent for his pleasure. And that inflection was in his voice and that look was in his eyes now. It was no longer use to resist. The fear of him was an agony. She would have to obey, as in the end he always forced her to obey. She wrenched her eyes away from his compelling stare, her bosom heaving under the soft silk, her chin quivering, and reached out blindly and took it from him. But the sudden chill of it against her bare breast seemed to revive the courage that was not yet dead in her. She flung up her head, the transient colour flaming into her cheeks, and her lips sprang open, but he drew her to him swiftly, and laid his hand over her mouth. "I know, I know," he said coldly. "I am a brute and a beast and a devil. You need not tell me again. It commences to grow tedious." His hand slipped to her shoulder, his fingers gripping the delicate, rounded arm. "How much longer are you going to fight? Would it not be wiser after what you have seen to-day to recognise that I am master?"

"You mean that you will treat me as you treated the colt this afternoon?" she whispered, her eyes drawn back irresistibly to his in spite of all her efforts.

"I mean that you must realise that my will is law."

"And if I do not?" He guessed rather than heard the words.

"Then I will teach you, and I think that you will learn—soon."

She quivered in his hands. It was a threat, but how much of it he meant to be taken literally she did not know. Again every ghastly detail of the afternoon passed with lightning speed through her mind. When he punished he punished mercilessly. To what lengths would he go? The Arab standards were not those of the men amongst whom she had lived. The position of a woman in the desert was a very precarious one. There were times when she forgot altogether that he was an Arab until some chance, as now, drove the hard fact home indisputably. He was an Arab, and as a woman she need expect no mercy at his hands. His hands! She looked down for a second sideways at the fingers gripping her shoulder and she saw them again stained with blood, saw them clenched round the dripping thong. She knew already by bitter experience the iron grip of his lean fingers and the compelling strength of his arms. Her quick imagination leaped ahead. What she had already suffered would be nothing compared with what would be. The remembrance of the stained, huddled figure of the servant he had chastised rose before her. And as she battled with herself, still torn in her passionate desire to make her strong will and courageous spirit triumph over her coward woman's body that shrank instinctively from physical torture, his arm tightened around her and she felt the hard muscles pressing against her shoulders and soft, bare neck, a suggestion of the force lying dormant beside her. She looked up at him slowly.