The Sheik | Page 9

most perfect
part of it." She yawned and realised suddenly that she was desperately
sleepy. She turned back into her room, leaving the windows wide, and,
flinging off her wrap, tumbled into bed and slept almost before her
head was on the pillow.
It must have been about an hour later when she awoke, suddenly wide
awake. She lay quite still, looking cautiously under her thick lashes.

The room was flooded with moonlight, there was nothing to be seen,
but she had the positive feeling that there was another presence in the
room beside her own; she had had a half-conscious vision in the
moment of waking of a shadowy something that had seemed to fade
away by the window. As the actual reality of this thought pierced
through the sleep that dulled her brain and became a concrete
suggestion, she sprang out of the bed and ran on to the balcony. It was
empty. She leaned over the railing, listening intently, but she could see
nothing and hear nothing. Puzzled, she went back into her room and
turned on the lights. Nothing seemed to be missing: her watch lay
where she had left it on the dressing table; and the suit-cases had
apparently not been tampered with. By the bedside the ivory-mounted
revolver that she always carried was lying as she had placed it. She
looked around the room again, frowning. "It must have been a dream,"
she said doubtfully, "but it seemed very real. It looked tall and white
and solid, and I felt it there." She waited a moment or two, then
shrugged her shoulders, turned out the lights, and got into bed. Her
nerves were admirable, and in five minutes she was asleep again.

CHAPTER II
The promised send-off had been enthusiastic. The arrangements for the
trip had been perfect; there had been no hitch anywhere. The guide,
Mustafa Ali, appeared capable and efficient, effacing himself when not
wanted and replying with courteous dignity when spoken to. The day
had been full of interest, and the long, hot ride had for Diana been the
height of physical enjoyment. They had reached the oasis where the
first night was to be passed an hour before, and found the camp already
established, tents pitched, and everything so ordered that Sir Aubrey
could find nothing to criticise; even Stephens, his servant, who had
travelled with him since Diana was a baby, and who was as critical as
his master on the subject of camps, had no fault to find.
Diana glanced about her little travelling tent with complete content. It
was much smaller than the ones to which she had always been
accustomed, ridiculously so compared with the large one she had had in

India the previous year, with its separate bath--and dressing-rooms.
Servants, too, had swarmed in India. Here service promised to be
inadequate, but it had been her whim on this tour to dispense with the
elaborate arrangements that Sir Aubrey cultivated and to try
comparative roughing it. The narrow camp cot, the tin bath, the little
folding table and her two suit-cases seemed to take up all the available
space. But she laughed at the inconvenience, though she had drenched
her bed with splashing, and the soap had found its way into the toe of
one of her long boots. She had changed from her riding clothes into a
dress of clinging jade-green silk, swinging short above her slender
ankles, the neck cut low, revealing the gleaming white of her soft,
girlish bosom. She came out of the tent and stood a moment
exchanging an amused smile with Stephens, who was hovering near
dubiously, one eye on her and the other on his master. She was late,
and Sir Aubrey liked his meals punctually. The baronet was lounging in
one deck-chair with his feet on another.
Diana wagged an admonishing forefinger. "Fly, Stephens, and fetch the
soup! If it is cold there will be a riot." She walked to the edge of the
canvas cloth that had been thrown down in front of the tents and stood
revelling in the scene around her, her eyes dancing with excitement as
they glanced slowly around the camp spread out over the oasis--the
clustering palm trees, the desert itself stretching away before her in
undulating sweeps, but seemingly level in the evening light, far off to
the distant hills lying like a dark smudge against the horizon. She drew
a long breath. It was the desert at last, the desert that she felt she had
been longing for all her life. She had never known until this moment
how intense the longing had been. She felt strangely at home, as if the
great, silent emptiness had been waiting for her as she had been waiting
for it, and now that