The personalities of the three men were widely different, but the expression of each was identical. The deduction was simple and yet to him wholly inexplicable. A woman--without doubt a woman! In the first two cases it was certainly so, he seemed to know instinctively that here, too, he was not mistaken in his supposition. A puzzled look crept into his fine dark eyes and a cynical smile hovered round his mouth as he viewed these three dissimilar men from the height of his own contemptuous indifference towards any and every woman. It was a weakness he did not understand, a phase of life that held no meaning for him at all. He had never bestowed a second glance on any woman of his own race, the attentions of European women in Paris and Algiers had been met with cold scorn that he masked with racial gravity of demeanour or frank insolence according to circumstances. For him women did not exist; he lived for his horses, for his regiment and for sport. To his strangely cold nature the influence that women exercised over other men was a thing inconceivable--the houris of the paradise of his fathers' creed were to him no incentive to enter the realms of the blessed. A character apart, incomprehensible alike to the warm-blooded Frenchmen with whom he associated and to his own passionate countrymen, he maintained his peculiarity tranquilly, undisturbed by the banter of his friends and the admonitions of his father, who in view of his heir's childlessness regarded his younger son's temperament with growing uneasiness as the years advanced.
The action of the French officer in Algiers had provoked in Saïd only intolerant contempt but, as he realised tonight, contempt was not possible in the cases of Craven and his brother. He pondered it with a curious feeling of irritation. What was it after all, this emotion of which he was ignorant--this compelling impulse that entered into a man driving him beyond the power of endurance? It was past his comprehension. And he wondered suddenly for the first time why he had been made so different to the generality of men. But introspection was foreign to him, he had not been in the habit of dissecting his own personality and his thoughts turned quickly with greater interest to the man who sat near him plunged like himself into silent reverie. And as he looked he scowled with angry irritation. The Frenchman in Algiers had not mattered, but Omar and Craven mattered very much. He resented the suffering he did not understand--the termination of a friendship he valued, for it was almost inevitable should Craven persist in his decision and the loss of a brother who was dearer to him than he would admit and whose death would mean a greater change in his own life than he cared to contemplate. That through a woman this should be possible! With hearty thoroughness and picturesque attention to detail he silently cursed all women in general and two women in particular. For the seriousness of the venture lay, at the moment, heavily upon him. He was tired and his enthusiasm temporarily damped by the unexpected and incomprehensible attitude of the two men by whom alone he permitted himself to be influenced. But gradually his natural buoyancy reasserted itself, and abandoning as insoluble the perplexing problem, he spoke again eagerly of the impending meeting with his hereditary foes. For half an hour they talked earnestly and then Saïd rose, announcing his intention of getting a few hours sleep before the early start. But he deferred his going, making one pretext after another for remaining, walking about the little tent in undecided hesitation, plainly embarrassed. Finally he swung toward Craven with a characteristic gesture of his long arms.