The Sheik | Page 7

her particularly. She was thinking only of the coming tour.
She stretched her arms out with a little happy laugh.

"It's the life of lives, and it's going to begin all over again to-morrow
morning." She crossed over to the dressing-table, and, propping her
elbows on it, looked at herself in the glass, with a little friendly smile at
the reflection. In default of any other confidant she had always talked to
herself, with no thought for the beauty of the face staring back at her
from the glass. The only comment she ever made to herself on her own
appearance was sometimes to wish that her hair was not such a
tiresome shade. She looked at herself now with a tinge of curiosity. "I
wonder why I'm so especially happy to-night. It must be because we
have been so long in Biskra. It's been very jolly, but I was beginning to
get very bored." She laughed again and picked up her watch to wind. It
was one of her peculiarities that she would wear no jewellery of any
kind. Even the gold repeater in her hand was on a plain leather strap.
She undressed slowly and each moment felt more wide-awake.
Slipping a thin wrap over her pyjamas and lighting a cigarette she went
out on to the broad balcony on to which her bedroom gave. The room
was on the first floor, and opposite her window rose one of the ornately
carved and bracketed pillars that supported the balcony, stretching up to
the second story above her head. She looked down into the gardens
below. It was an easy climb, she thought, with a boyish grin--far easier
than many she had achieved successfully when the need of a solitary
ramble became imperative. But the East was inconvenient for solitary
ramble; native servants had a disconcerting habit of lying down to sleep
wherever drowsiness overcame them, and it was not very long since
she had slid down from her balcony and landed plumb on a slumbering
bundle of humanity who had roused half the hotel with his howls. She
leant far over the rail, trying to see into the verandah below, and she
thought she caught a glimpse of white drapery. She looked again, and
this time there was nothing, but she shook her head with a little grimace,
and swung herself up on to the broad ledge of the railing. Settling
herself comfortably with her back against the column she looked out
over the hotel gardens into the night, humming softly the Kashmiri
song she had heard earlier in the evening.
The risen moon was full, and its cold, brilliant light filled the garden
with strong black shadows. She watched some that seemed even to
move, as if the garden were alive with creeping, hurrying figures, and

amused herself tracking them until she traced them to the palm tree or
cactus bush that caused them. One in particular gave her a long hunt till
she finally ran it to its lair, and it proved to be the shadow of a
grotesque lead statue half hidden by a flowering shrub. Forgetting the
hour and the open windows all around her, she burst into a rippling peal
of laughter, which was interrupted by the appearance of a figure,
imperfectly seen through the lattice-work which divided her balcony
from the next one, and the sound of an irritable voice.
"For Heaven's sake, Diana, let other people sleep if you can't."
"Which, being interpreted, is let Sir Aubrey Mayo sleep," she retorted,
with a chuckle. "My dear boy, sleep if you want to, but I don't know
how you can on a night like this. Did you ever see such a gorgeous
moon?"
"Oh, damn the moon!"
"Oh, very well. Don't get cross about it. Go back to bed and put your
head under the clothes, and then you won't see it. But I'm going to sit
here."
"Diana, don't be an idiot! You'll go to sleep and fall into the garden and
break your neck."
"_Tant pis pour moi. Tant mieux pour toi,_" she said flippantly. "I have
left you all that I have in the world, dear brother. Could devotion go
further?"
She paid no heed to his exclamation of annoyance, and looked back
into the garden. It was a wonderful night, silent except for the cicadas'
monotonous chirping, mysterious with the inexplicable mystery that
hangs always in the Oriental night. The smells of the East rose up all
around her; here, as at home, they seemed more perceptible by night
than by day. Often at home she had stood on the little stone balcony
outside her room, drinking in the smells of the night--the pungent,
earthy smell after rain, the aromatic smell of pine trees near the house.
It was the