"Why are you here, and where is Gaston?"
In a stifled voice she told him everything. What did it matter? If she
tried to be silent he would force her to speak.
He made no comment, and bringing The Hawk nearer tossed her up roughly
into the saddle and swung up behind her, the black breaking at once
into the usual headlong gallop. She made no kind of resistance, a
complete apathy seemed to have come over her. She did not look at the
body of Silver Star, she looked at nothing, clinging to the front of
the saddle, and staring ahead of her unseeingly. She had dropped her
helmet when she fell and she had left it, thankful to be relieved of
the pressure on her aching head. Her mental collapse had affected her
physically, and it needed a real effort of will-power to enable her to
sit up right. Very soon they would join the horsemen, who were waiting
for them, and for her pride's sake she must concentrate all her energy
to avoid betraying her weakness.
Ahmed Ben Hassan did not go back through the defile, he turned into a
little path that Diana had overlooked and which skirted the hills. In
about half-an-hour the troop met them, riding slowly from the opposite
direction. She did not raise her eyes as they approached, but she heard
Yusef's clear tenor voice calling out to the Sheik, who answered
shortly as the men fell in behind him. Back over the ground that she
had traversed so differently. She knew that it had been madness from
the first. She should have known that it could never succeed, that she
could never reach civilisation alone. She had been a fool ever to
imagine that she could win through. The chance that had thrown her
again into the Sheik's power might just as easily have thrown her into
the hands of any other Arab. Luck had helped Ahmed Ben Hassan even as
she herself had unknowingly played into his hands when he had captured
her first. Fate was with him. It was useless to try and struggle
against him any more. Her brain was a confused medley of thoughts that
she was too tired to unravel, strange, conflicting ideas chasing wildly
through her mind. She did not understand them, she did not try. The
effort of thinking made her head ache agonisingly. She was conscious of
a great unrest, a dull aching in her heart and a terrible depression
that was altogether apart from the fear she felt of the Sheik. She gave
up trying to think; she was concerned only with trying to keep her
balance.