A Son of the Sahara Part 28

And you'll be thinking, 'What an idiotic fuss I made over that girl I met in Grand Canary. Let me see, what _was_ her name? Violet or Daisy, or some stupid flower name. Who said yes in the moonlight, and no in the cool, calm light of day. Good Lord! but for her sense I should be married now. Married! Phew, what an escape! For if she'd roped me in there'd have been no gallivanting with other women'!"

Le Breton laughed.

"Now I'm forgiven," she said quickly.

"Forgiven, Heart's Ease, yes. But whilst there's life in me you'll never be forgotten."

He paused, looking at her speculatively.

"So far as I see, there's nothing between us except that you're too fond of your own way to get married," he remarked presently.

"Yes. I suppose that's it really."

"'If I were a king in Babylon and you were a Christian slave,'" he quoted, "or, to get down to more modern times, if I were a barbaric Sultan somewhere in Africa and you a girl I'd fancied and caught and carried off, I'd just take you into my harem and nothing more would be said."

"I should fight like a wildcat. You'd get horribly scratched and bitten."

"Possibly, but--I should win in the end."

Pansy's face went suddenly crimson under the glowing eyes that watched her with such love and desire in their dark depths.

"I think we're talking a lot of nonsense," she remarked.

"What is it you English say? 'There's many a true word spoken in jest,'" he replied with curious emphasis.

It was not jest to him.

Even as he stood talking to Pansy he was cogitating on how he could best get her into his power, should persuasion fail to bring her back to his arms within a week or two.

His yacht was in the harbour. She was in the habit of wandering about alone. He had half a dozen Arab servants with him, men who would do without question anything their Sultan told them. To abduct her would be an easy matter. Once she was in his power, he would take her to El-Ammeh and keep her there. As his wife, if she would marry him; as his slave, if she would not.

Le Breton had no desire to do any such thing except as a last resource, but he had no intention of letting Pansy go.

Her voice broke into his broodings.

"Since you've been so nice about everything, I'm going to keep you and take you for a cruise round the island. I want to have just one day alone with you, so that in years to come I shall know exactly how much I've missed."

He smiled in a slightly savage manner. It amused him to hear the girl talking as if he were but a pleasant incident in her life, when he intended to be the biggest fact that had ever been there.

"In your way of doing things, Pansy, you remind me rather of myself,"

he remarked. "You're carrying me off, w.i.l.l.y nilly, as I might be tempted to carry you."

"It must be because we're both millionaires," she replied. "Little facts of the sort are apt to make one a trifle high-handed."

She touched a bell.

When a steward appeared she put Le Breton into his care. Leaving the saloon, she went herself to interview the captain about her plans.

She was leaning against the yacht's rail, slim and white, with the breeze blowing her curls when Le Breton joined her. And she smiled at him in a frank, boyish fashion, as if their little difference of opinion had never been.

"What can I do to amuse you?" she asked.

"I don't need any amusing when I'm with you," he said. "You're all-sufficing."

"You mustn't say things like that, Raoul," she replied; "they're apt to make one's decisions wobble."

For Pansy the morning sped quickly. For Le Breton it was part of the dream he had dreamt before her note had come and upset his calculations, making him rearrange his plans in a manner that, although it would give him a certain amount of satisfaction, might not be so pleasing to the girl.

The vessel skirted the rounded island, bringing glimpses of quiet bays where white houses nestled, rocky cliffs, stony barrancos cut deep into the hill-side, and pine-clad heights.

There was a lunch _a deux_, with attentive stewards hovering in the background. Afterwards they had coffee and liqueurs and cigarettes on deck. An hour or so was dawdled away there, then Pansy took her guest back to her own special sanctum.

He went over to the piano, touching a note here and there.

"Play me something," she said, for he touched the instrument with the hand of a music lover.

"I was brought up in the backwoods," he replied, "and I never saw a piano until I was nearly nineteen. After that I was too busy making money and doing what I thought was enjoying myself to have time to go in for anything of the sort. But I'd like to listen to you," he finished.

Willingly Pansy seated herself at the piano. Le Breton likewise sat himself in a deep chair close by, and gave himself up to the delight of her playing. She wandered from one song to another, quick to see she had an appreciative audience.

In the end she paused and glanced at him as he sat quiet, all his restless look gone, as if at peace with himself and the world.

"Does music 'soothe your savage breast'?" she asked.

"It could never be savage where you're concerned, Pansy,"

"You talk as if I were quite different from other people."

"So you are. The only woman I've ever loved."

"When you talk like that, the wobbling comes on," she remarked.

To avoid his reply, she started playing again.

Getting to his feet, Le Breton went to the piano. Standing behind her, his arms encircling her, he lifted the small, music-making hands from the keys, and holding them, drew her back until her head rested against him.

"Pansy, suppose I consent to a six months' engagement? The waiting would be purgatory; but I could do it with paradise beyond."

"I'm not taking on any engagements. Not for the next ten years, at least."

He laughed softly and put the slim hands back on the piano with a lingering, careful touch, letting them pursue their way. Whether she liked it or not, this lovely, wayward girl would be his before many weeks had pa.s.sed.

Then he returned to his chair and sat there deep in some reverie, this time not planning the sort of home he would make for her in Paris, but how he would have certain rooms in his palace at El-Ammeh furnished for her reception.

A steward announcing tea brought him out of his meditations.

Tea was served on deck, with the sun glinting on the blue water and running in golden cascades down the hill-side.

Together they watched the sun set and saw night barely shadow the world when the moon rose, filling the scene with silver glory.