A Son of the Sahara Part 27

The unexpectedness of it all left him numb. Then a surge of hot rage went through him, finally leaving him cold, collected, and furious.

She had dared to scorn him, this English girl! Dared to hurl his love and protestations back into his teeth. Protestations such as he had made to no other woman.

It was the greatest shock and surprise Le Breton had had during the course of his wild life of unquestioned power and limitless money.

He was in no mood to see the love her note breathed. He saw only one fact--that he had been cast aside.

A woman had dared to act towards him as he had often acted towards women.

As he brooded on the note, trying to grasp the almost incredible truth, the cruel look about his mouth deepened.

Putting the note into his pocket, he poured himself another cup of coffee. Then he sat on, staring at the purple pansies, no longer lost in dreams of love and delight, where his one aim was to be all the girl imagined him to be; but in a savage reverie that had love in it, perhaps, but of quite another quality than that which he had already offered.

Full of anger and injured pride as Le Breton was, it did not prevent him going over to the hotel and inquiring for Miss Langham.

He learnt that she was out, on board her yacht. And it seemed to him that she had fled from his wrath.

But he was wrong.

Pansy had gone there knowing he would be sure to come and inquire into the meaning of her note. On board her yacht there was more privacy; a privacy she wanted for Le Breton's sake, not her own. Considering his fiery Latin temperament, he might not take his _conge_ in the manner of her more stolid nation. There might be a scene.

She never imagined he would take her decree calmly. There was an air about him as if he had never been thwarted in any way. She was prepared for some unpleasant minutes--minutes, nevertheless, that she had no intention of shirking, which she knew she had brought upon herself by her impetuous promises.

She was sitting alone in her own special sanctum on the yacht.

It was a large saloon--boudoir, music-room, and study combined; white and gold and purple, like herself, with a grand piano in one corner, deep chairs upholstered in yellow with purple cushions, a yellow carpet and white walls and ceiling.

In the midst of it she sat cool and collected, in a simple white yachting suit.

As Le Breton entered she rose, scanning him quickly. She had never seen him so proud and aloof-looking, his face so set and hard. But there was a look of suppressed suffering in his eyes that cut her to the quick.

Neither said a word until the door closed behind the steward.

Then Le Breton crossed to the girl's side.

"What nonsense is this?" he asked in a cold, angry voice, holding her note towards her. "You promised to marry me, and you must carry out your promise. I'm not going to be put lightly to one side in this manner."

"I haven't put you lightly to one side," she answered. "I think I explained exactly how things were in my note."

"Explanations! I'm not here for explanations," he said, with cold impatience; "but to insist that you fulfill your promise."

"I couldn't do that," she replied quietly.

With the air of still moving in the midst of some incredible truth, he stared at her.

"You've been flirting with me," he said presently, a note of savagery and scorn in his voice. "You are a true English _demievierge_. You rouse a man without the least intention of satisfying him."

Pansy flushed under his contempt. She hated being called "a flirt"; she was not one. She did not know why she had acted as she had done the previous night. But once in his arms, she had wanted to stay. And once he had started talking of love, she wanted to listen. With him she had forgotten all about her own scheme of life and her cherished liberty.

She knew she had not played the game with Le Breton. From the bottom of her heart she was sorry. She did not blame him, but herself.

"I'm not a flirt," she said quietly. "I've never let any man kiss me before. I'm very sorry for all that happened last night."

He laughed in a harsh, grating manner.

"Good G.o.d, Pansy! there are a hundred women and more plotting and scheming to try and make me feel for them what I feel for you. And you say you're sorry!"

He broke off, his proud face twisted with pain and chagrin.

Pansy knew his was no idle boast. An army of women must lie in wait for a man of his wealth combined with good looks and such powers of fascination.

"I'm only sorry you picked on me," she said, a note of distress in her voice. "More sorry than I can say. You know I hate giving pain."

Like one dazed, the Sultan Casim Ammeh listened to a woman saying she was sorry he had favoured her as he had no other of her s.e.x--To an extent he had never imagined he would favour any woman, so that he was ready to change his religion, his whole mode of life, for her sake.

"But I couldn't give up my liberty," her voice was saying. "I couldn't get married. And I've a perfect right to change my mind."

"It's not a privilege I intend to allow you," he said in a strangled voice.

"Well, it's one I intend to a.s.sert," she answered, suddenly goaded by his imperious att.i.tude.

"You've deliberately fooled me," he said savagely.

"No, I haven't really," she replied, patient again under the pain in the fierce, restless eyes watching her. "I like you immensely, but not enough to marry you."

"I suppose I ought to feel flattered," he said cuttingly.

Pansy laid a hand on his sleeve with a little soothing, conciliatory gesture.

"Don't be so horrid, Raoul. Do try and see things as I see them. I didn't mean to say 'yes' last night; but when you held me in your arms and kissed me there was nothing else I could do."

His name on her lips, her touch on his arm, broke through his seethe of cold anger.

"And if I held and kissed you again, what then?" he asked, suddenly melting.

"Here in the 'garish light of day' it wouldn't alter my intention in the least," she said. "There are so many things that call me in the daytime. But last night, Raoul, there was only you."

He bent over her, dark and handsome, looking the king the Sultan Casim Ammeh had made him.

"Give me the nights, Pansy," he whispered, "and the days I'll leave to you."

"Oh no, I couldn't. Before so long you'd have swallowed up my days too. For there's an air about you as if you wouldn't be satisfied until you had the whole of me. But I shall often think of last night,"

she went on, a touch of longing in her voice. "In days to come, when we're thousands of miles apart, in the midst of my schemes, when the lights are brightest and the bands their loudest and the fun at its highest, I shall stop all at once with a little pain in my heart and wonder where the nice man is who kissed me under the palms in the Grand Canary. And I shall say to myself, 'Now, if I'd been a marrying sort, I'd have married him.' And twenty years hence, when pleasure palls, I shall wish I had married him; because there'll never be any man I shall like half as much as I like you."

As she talked Le Breton watched her, wild schemes budding and blossoming in his head.

"And I? What shall I be thinking?" he asked.

"You! Oh, you'll have forgotten all about me by next year--Perhaps next month, even," she replied, smiling at him rather sadly. "One girl is much the same to you as the next, provided she's equally pretty.