"Monseigneur begs that you will excuse him until this evening. He will

return in time for dinner," he murmured as he handed her a cous-cous.

Diana looked up blankly. "Monseigneur?"

"My master. The Sheik."

She flushed scarlet and her face hardened. Hypocritical, Oriental beast

who "begged to be excused"! She refused the last dish curtly, and as

the servant carried it away she propped her elbows on the table and

rested her aching head on her hands. A headache was among the new

experiences that had overwhelmed her since the day before. Suffering in

any form was new to her, and her hatred of the man who had made her

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suffer grew with every breath she drew.

The Frenchman came back with coffee and cigarettes. He held a match for

her, coaxing the reluctant flame with patience that denoted long

experience with inferior sulphur.

"Monseigneur dines at eight. At what hour will Madame have tea?" he

asked, as he cleared away and folded up the table.

Diana choked back the sarcastic retort that sprang to her lips. The

man's quiet, deferential manner, that refused to see anything

extraordinary in her presence in his master's camp, was almost harder

to bear than flagrant impertinence would have been. That she could have

dealt with; this left her tingling with a feeling of impotence, as if a

net were gradually closing round her in whose entangling meshes her

vaunted liberty was not only threatened, but which seemed destined even

to stifle her very existence. She pulled her racing thoughts up with a

jerk. She must not think if she was going to keep any hold over herself

at all. She gave him an answer indifferently and turned her back on

him. When she looked again he was gone, and she heaved a sigh of

relief. She had chafed under his watchful eyes until the feeling of

restraint had grown unbearable.

She breathed more freely now that he was gone, flinging up her head and

jerking her shoulders back with an angry determination to conquer the

fear that made her ashamed. Natural curiosity had been struggling with

her other emotions, and she gave way to it now to try and turn the

channel of her thoughts from the fixed direction in which they tended,

and wandered round the big room. The night before she had taken in

nothing of her surroundings, her eyes had been held only by the man who

had dominated everything. Here, also, were the same luxurious

appointments as in the sleeping-room. She had knowledge enough to

appreciate that the rugs and hangings were exquisite, the former were

Persian and the latter of a thick black material, heavily embroidered

in silver.




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