She wondered numbly what would become of her. It did not seem to matter
much. Nothing mattered now that he did not want her any more. The old
life was far away, in another world. She could never go back to it. She
did not care. It was nothing to her. It was only here in the desert, in
Ahmed Ben Hassan's arms, that she had become alive, that she had
learned what life really meant, that she had waked both to happiness
and sorrow.
The future stretched out blank and menacing before her, but she turned
from it with a great sob of despair. It was on him that her thoughts
were fixed. How would life be endurable without him? Dully she wondered
why she did not hate him for having done to her what he had done, for
having made her what she was. But nothing that he could do could kill
the love now that he had inspired. And she would never regret. She
would always have the memory of the fleeting happiness that had been
hers--in after years that memory would be all that she would have to
live for. Even in her heart she did not reproach him, there was no
bitterness in her misery. She had always known that it would come,
though she had fenced with it, shutting it out of her mind resolutely.
He had never led her to expect anything else. There was no link to
bring them closer together, no bond between them. If she could have had
the promise of a child. Alone though she was the sensitive colour
flamed into her cheeks, and she hid her face in the pillows with a
quivering sob.
A child that would be his and hers, a child--a boy with
the same passionate dark eyes, the same crisp brown hair, the same
graceful body, who would grow up as tall and strong, as brave and
fearless as his father. Surely he must love her then. Surely the memory
of his own mother's tragic history would make him merciful to the
mother of his son. But she had no hope of that mercy. She lay shaking
with passionate yearning and the storm of bitter tears that swept over
her, hungry for the clasp of his arms, faint with longing. The pent-up
misery of weeks that she had crushed down surged over. There was nobody
to hear the agonising sobs that shook her from head to foot. She could
relax the control that she had put upon herself and which had seemed to
be slowly turning her to stone. She could give way to the emotion that,
suppressed, had welled up choking in her throat and gripped her
forehead like red-hot bands eating into her brain. Tears were not easy
to her. She had not wept since that first night when, with the fear of
worse than death, she had grovelled at his feet, moaning for mercy. She
had not wept during the terrible hours she was in the power of Ibraheim
Omair, nor during the days that Raoul de Saint Hubert had fought for
his friend's life. But to-night the tears that all her life she had
despised would not be denied. Tortured with conflicting emotions,
unsatisfied love, fear and uncertainty, utterly unnerved, she gave
herself up at last to the feelings she could no longer restrain. Prone
on the wide bed, her face buried in the pillows, her hands clutching
convulsively at the silken coverings, she wept until she had no more
tears, until the anguished, sobs died away into silence and she lay
quiet, exhausted.