A Son of the Sahara Part 35

"You couldn't have done that. There would be your ... your wives to consider."

"I have no wife by my religion or yours."

"But that woman at your villa, wasn't she----" Pansy began.

"I've half a dozen women in one of my--houses; but none of them are my wives. You're the only woman I've ever asked for in marriage. You!"

He laughed in a cruel, hard way, as if at some devil's joke.

Pansy's hand went to her head--a weary, hopeless gesture.

He was beyond her comprehension, this man who calmly confessed to having a half a dozen women in one of his houses, to a woman he would have made his wife.

"I'm sorry," she said in a dreary tone, "but I can't understand you.

I'd no idea there were men who seemed just like other men and yet behaved in this ... this extraordinary fashion."

"I'm not aware that my behaviour is extraordinary. Every man in my country has a harem if he can afford it."

Deliberately he put these facts before the girl in his desire to hurt and hate her as he hated her father. But the look of suffering on her face hurt him as much as he was hurting her. And he hated himself more than he hated her, because uprooting the love he had for her out of his heart was proving such a difficult task.

"It's a harem, is it?" Pansy said distastefully. "Now I'm beginning to understand. But I don't want to hear anything more about it. I see now it was a mistake my asking you here. But I wanted you to know--to know----"

She floundered and stopped and started again, anxious to be fair with him in spite of everything.

"I wanted you to understand that the fact of your religion and race made your behaviour seem quite different from what it would have been were you a ... a European. I want you to see that I know you have your point of view, that I can't in all fairness blame you for doing what is not wrong according to your standpoint, even if it is according to mine."

With his cold, cruel smile deepening, he watched her floundering after excuses for him, endeavouring to see his point of view, to be just and fair.

"You're very magnanimous," he said, with biting scorn.

"And you are very unkind," she flashed, suddenly out of patience.

"You're making everything as hard for me as you possibly can. You're doing it deliberately; and you look as if you enjoyed hurting me. I never thought you'd be like this, Raoul. I would have liked to part as friends since ... since anything else is impossible."

His name on her lips made a spasm cross Le Breton's face.

As he stood there fighting against himself he knew he was still madly in love with the girl he was determined to hate, and he despised himself for his own weakness.

Pansy watched him, a look of suppressed suffering shadowing her eyes.

She would have given all she possessed--her cherished freedom, her vast riches, her life--to have had him as she once thought him, a man of her own colour, not with this dreadful black barrier between them; a tragedy so ghastly that the fact of Lucille Lemesurier now seemed a laughing matter. He was lost to her for ever. No amount of love or understanding could pull down that barrier.

"Good-bye," she said, holding out her hand. "I'm sorry we ever dropped across one another."

Le Breton made no reply. Cold and unsmiling, he watched her.

There was a brief silence.

Outside, the sea sobbed and splashed like tears against the vessel's side. But all the tears in the world could not wash the black stain from him.

As they stood looking at one another, a verse came and sang like a dirge in Pansy's head:

What are we waiting for? Oh, my heart, Kiss me straight on the brow and part: Again! Again, my heart, my heart What are we waiting for, you and I?

A pleading look--a stifled cry-- Good-bye for ever. Good-bye, good-bye.

"Good-bye," she said again.

Then he smiled his cold, cruel smile.

"No, Pansy. I say--au revoir."

Ignoring her outstretched hand, he bowed. Then, after one long look at her, he turned and was gone.

As the door closed behind him Pansy blinked back two tears.

It had hurt her horribly to see him so set and cold, with that cruel look in his eyes where love once had been.

She wished that "The Sultan" had killed her that day in the East End of London; or that Raoul Le Breton had been drowned that night in the sea.

Anything rather than that they should have met to make each other suffer.

PART III

CHAPTER I

Over El-Ammeh great stars flashed, like silver lamps in the purple dome above the desert city. Their light gave a faint, misty white tinge to the scented blueness of the harem garden. There, trees sighed softly, moving vague and shadow-like as a warm breeze stirred them. The walled pleasance was filled with the scent of flowers, of roses, magnolia, heliotrope, mimosa and a hundred other blossoms, for night lay heavy upon the garden.

In sunken ponds the stars were mirrored, rocking gently on the surface of the ruffled water. Close by one of the silvered pools, a man's figure showed, big and white, in flowing garments. Against him a slender girl leant.

Rayma's eyes rivalled the stars as she gazed up at her sultan and owner. Yet in their dark depths a touch of anxiety lurked.

A fortnight ago, the Sultan had returned to El-Ammeh. The first week had been one of blissful happiness for the Arab girl. For her master had returned more her lover than ever. But, as the days went on, doubts crept into her heart, vague and haunting. At times it seemed to her he was not quite the same man who left her for Paris. For he had a habit now that he had not had before he went away--a disconcerting habit of looking at her with unseeing eyes, as if his thoughts were elsewhere.

This mood was on him now.

Although the night called for nothing but love and caresses, none had fallen to her lot. Although she rested against him, she might not have been there for all the notice he took. He appeared to have forgotten her, as he gazed in a brooding, longing manner at the soft, velvety depths of the purple sky--sky as deeply, softly purple as pansies.

Rayma pressed closer to her lord and sultan, looking at him with love-laden, anxious eyes.

"Beloved," she whispered softly, "are your thoughts with some woman in Paris?"

With a start, his attention came back to her. In the starlight he scanned her little face in a fierce, hungry, disappointed manner. For the slight golden girl who now rested upon his heart brought him none of the contentment he had known when Pansy had been there.

"No, little one," he said gently. "I prefer you to all the women I met in Paris."