She shrank back, quivering, dragging the lapels of her riding jacket
together over her breast with clutching hands, obeying an impulse that
she hardly understood.
"Who are you?" she gasped hoarsely.
"I am the Sheik Ahmed Ben Hassan."
The name conveyed nothing. She had never heard it before. She had
spoken without thinking in French, and in French he replied to her.
"Why have you brought me here?" she asked, fighting down the fear that
was growing more terrible every moment.
He repeated her words with a slow smile. "Why have I brought you here?
Bon Dieu! Are you not woman enough to know?"
She shrank back further, a wave of colour rushing into her face that
receded immediately, leaving her whiter than she had been before. Her
eyes fell under the kindling flame in his. "I don't know what you
mean," she whispered faintly, with shaking lips.
"I think you do." He laughed softly, and his laugh frightened her more
than anything he had said. He came towards her, and although she was
swaying on her feet, desperately she tried to evade him, but with a
quick movement he caught her in his arms.
Terror, agonising, soul-shaking terror such as she had never imagined,
took hold of her. The flaming light of desire burning in his eyes
turned her sick and faint. Her body throbbed with the consciousness of
a knowledge that appalled her. She understood his purpose with a horror
that made each separate nerve in her system shrink against the
understanding that had come to her under the consuming fire of his
ardent gaze, and in the fierce embrace that was drawing her shaking
limbs closer and closer against the man's own pulsating body. She
writhed in his arms as he crushed her to him in a sudden access of
possessive passion. His head bent slowly down to her, his eyes burned
deeper, and, held immovable, she endured the first kiss she had ever
received. And the touch of his scorching lips, the clasp of his arms,
the close union with his warm, strong body robbed her of all strength,
of all power of resistance.
With a great sob her eyes closed wearily, the hot mouth pressed on hers
was like a narcotic, drugging her almost into insensibility. Numbly she
felt him gather her high up into his arms, his lips still clinging
closely, and carry her across the tent through curtains into an
adjoining room. He laid her down on soft cushions. "Do not make me wait
too long," he whispered, and left her.