A Soldier of the Legion

NO. 1033

For a second the contestants eyed each other.

A strange hush seemed to fall upon all, a situation always present in affairs of this kind. It was noticeable to Max. "It might well be said that a calm always preceded a storm," Max reflected, and then he heard a voice speak close to his ear.

He dared not turn his head for fear of a sudden onslaught by his antagonist, but even as low as the tone was, he recognized the voice—it was the same voice that had begged him stealthily for his civilian clothes!

"Beware of his foot," said the voice. "He's English, but he fights French fashion with la savate."

Max had not expected the savate from an Englishman, and he was very glad of the warning.

It flashed through his brain just what the terrible savate could accomplish—a lightning-like kick landing on the jaw of an adversary, being much more crushing and damaging than the hardest punch.

The warning came just in time, for he had only a brief chance to steady himself when Four Eyes rushed at him like a maddened bull.

As he neared Max he let go two terrific swings, first with his left and then with his right hand, but his smaller opponent side-stepped with the nimbleness of a cat, and Pelle rushed by two or three steps before he could stop.

At once he turned with a lithe movement, surprisingly graceful for a body so big, and made ready as though to once more swing his two flail-like fists.

Again did Max set himself to dodge Pelle's punches, but instead of letting his two hands fly, one after the other, he bent his huge body back from the waist, and at the same time shot his right foot upward toward the other's face.

It was a fearful kick, and had it landed on Max's jaw it would have ended the fight then and there, indeed, if it did not break his neck. But that whispered warning about the savate was Max's salvation.

With a quick backward jerk of his head he saved himself—just barely saved himself—and the big foot shot harmlessly up into the air, Pelle almost losing his balance in the unsuccessful effort.

Before the latter could really regain his footing Max stepped in and, with left and right, landed full on his opponent's face, the last of the two punches coming flush on the nose with smashing force. It rocked the amazed Pelle back on his heels.

Moreover, the surprise at the force of the blow was not greater than the surprise at the sudden knowledge of the fact that the "Yankee Spy" was no bungling amateur, but that he had all the ear-marks of a skilled professional.

Well, he could not be fooled again, and on top of this thought came a heavy grunt as Max again stepped in and swung a swift right hook to his stomach and then jumped out of harm's way.

This blow took Pelle's wind and he began to dance around on his toes with the lightness of thistledown, despite his discomfiture, while all the time he watched the clever Max between half-closed eyes, waiting for another chance to deliver that awful kick where it would surely put the other out of business.

Now and then the big man would try an occasional swing at his elusive opponent, but it was more of an attempt to cover up his real intention rather than to land effectively. Well he knew that his best and quickest chance to end the fight lay in his ability to kick the other man insensible, and so he tried to fool and disarm Max by a bluff attack.

In this manner they danced about each other for a short space; the American, apparently whenever he chose, stepped in and landed left and right on the other's jaw with a sound like the crack of a whip.

There was a snap to Max's punches, a snap that stung and made an impression, and so while the big man almost exploded with fury at the gruelling he had to go through as his graceful adversary jumped in and out and banged him, he still nursed his best blow—the murderous kick!—holding it in reserve until the right moment.

Finally, in the course of Max's punishing onslaught, in which he was leaping in and out with unceasing agility, he—stumbled! This was just what Pelle was waiting for, and then, like the fillip of a spring-board, the heavy boot went toward Max's head!

Though he saw it start, and though he swung his head back, Max could not escape it altogether, and it grazed his chin. For an instant the barrack yard and the white-clad ring of men swam before his eyes. It seemed as though an iron bolt had entered his chin and gone through the top of his head, but he did not quite lose all presence of mind, though he did bend away from the other until he almost fell on his own back.

Pelle saw his advantage and, with a yelp of joy, jumped forward and swung his other foot. As he did so reason returned to Max and with it came a blind rage at the other's unfairness.

With the quickness of a panther, and with the strength of ten men, he swung his slim body sideways and then bent forward to let go a vicious right-hand swing—flush to the other's jaw!

The kick missed Max—missed him by a hair—but the punch landed, landed with every ounce of bone and muscle behind it that Max had in his body.

Down crashed the champion on the back of his skull, with a thud amid a spatter of gravel!

For an instant the huge form lay still, while the ring of Legionnaires remained petrified. Suddenly the group realized that the fighting cock had been beaten by the bantam.

Then, with visions of "cellule" for every one concerned, four or five men sprang to pick up the champion. As they got him to his feet, blood poured from his swollen and disfigured nose. Coming slowly to himself, Pelle wiped it away dazedly with the back of a hairy hand, anxious, even in semi-consciousness, to preserve the purity of his uniform, sacred in the Legion.

Max stood his ground, rather expecting to be attacked in revenge by some of Pelle's angry allies; and the man who had warned him to beware of "la savate" took a step nearer him. But both were new to the Legion Etrangére, and did not yet know the true spirit of the regiment.

Only admiring looks were turned upon the astonished young conqueror, who was rather surprised at his own easy victory. As Pelle came to himself in his friends' arms, the big fellow staggered forward, holding out a bloodstained paw.

THE AGHA'S ROSE

Sanda did not know, and would not know for many days, the news of Sidi-bel-Abbés, for she had started on a long journey, to the "wonderful place" of which she would have spoken to Max had she not been warned by her father's word and look that the story was "irrelevant."

If Sanda had tried to tell the tale of that "romance" at which she had hinted in the Salle d'Honneur, she would have had to begin far back in time when, after his wife's death, Georges DeLisle had by his own request been transferred to the Legion. His first big fight had been in helping the Agha of Djazerta against a raid of Touaregs, the veiled men of the South, brigands then and always. Since those days, DeLisle and Ben Râana, the great desert chief, had been friends. More than once they had given each other aid and counsel. When Ben Râana came north with other Caids, bidden to the Governor's ball in Algiers, he paid DeLisle a visit. Each year at the season of date-gathering he sent the colonel of the Legion a present of the honey-sweet, amber-clear fruit for which the oasis of Djazerta was famous; and the officer sent to the Agha a parcel of French books, or some new invention in the shape of a clock, such as Arabs love. Now he was sending his daughter.

The way of it was this: just before Sanda's surprise arrival, the Agha of Djazerta, chief of the Ouled-Mendil, had written a confidential letter to Colonel DeLisle. He had a young daughter whom he adored. Foolishly (he began to think) he had let her learn French, and allowed her to read French novels. These books had made the girl discontented with her cloistered life. Being the only child, and always rather delicate, perhaps she had been too much spoiled. Greater freedom than she had could not be granted; but seeing her sad Ben Râana had asked himself what he could do for her happiness. Before long she would marry, of course; but it had occurred to him that meanwhile it might be well if a companion could be found who would be a safe friend for a girl of Ourïeda's position and religion. Did Colonel DeLisle know of any young gentlewoman, English or French, who would be willing to come to Djazerta? She must be educated and accomplished, but above all trustworthy; one who would not try to make Ourïeda wish for a life that could never be hers: one who would not attempt to unsettle the child's religious beliefs. In writing this letter Ben Râana had shown a naïf sort of conceit in his own broad-mindedness, which would have been rather comic if it had not been pathetic. But to DeLisle it was only pathetic, because, European though he was, he knew the hidden romance of the Agha's life: his worship of a beautiful Spanish wife who had died years ago, and for love of whom he had vowed never to take into his harem any other woman, although he had no son. His nearest male relative was a nephew, to whom DeLisle imagined that some day Ourïeda would be married, though the young man was at least a dozen years older than she.

When the letter came, Colonel DeLisle knew of no such person as Ben Râana asked for; but he had not answered yet when Sanda unexpectedly appeared. Hardly had he recovered from the first shock of his surprise when he remembered the great march soon to be undertaken—a march ostensibly for maneuvers, but in reality to punish a band of desert raiders, and later, men of the Legion were to begin the laying of a new road in the far south, even beyond Djazerta. There would be no long rest for the colonel of the First Regiment for many months, consequently he would be unable to keep Sanda with him. She did not want to go back to France or Ireland, so she was told about the Agha of Djazerta and the sixteen-year-old girl, Ourïeda, whose Arab name meant "Little Rose."

Next to staying at the headquarters of the Foreign Legion with its colonel, Sanda liked the idea of going into the desert and living for a while the life of an Arab woman with the daughter of a great chief of the south. The more she thought of it, the more it appealed to her. Besides, when her father pointed out Djazerta on the map, and not more than twenty kilometres away the douar, or tribal encampment under the rule of Ben Râana, she noticed that they seemed to be scarcely a hundred kilometres distant from Touggourt. Probably Richard Stanton would be spending many days or even weeks at Touggourt before he set off across vast desert spaces searching for the Lost Oasis. So the girl said to Colonel DeLisle that, since she could not at present stay with him, she would like beyond everything else such a romantic adventure as a visit to the Agha's house.

The one objection was that, if she went at all, she must start at once, because there was at the moment a great chance for her to travel well chaperoned. A captain of the Chasseurs d'Afrique had just been ordered from Sidi-bel-Abbés to Touggourt, and was leaving at once with his wife. They could take Sanda with them: and at Touggourt Ben Râana would have his friend's daughter met by an escort and several women servants. It was an opportunity not to miss; though otherwise Colonel DeLisle might have kept the girl with him for a fortnight longer.

Sanda would have liked to bid Max good-bye, or if that were not possible, to write him a letter. But DeLisle said it "would not do." Not that the newly enlisted soldier would misunderstand: but—he would realize why he heard nothing more from his colonel's daughter. She need not fear that he would be hurt. So Sanda could send only a thought message to her friend, and perhaps it reached him in a dream, for the night of her departure—knowing nothing of it—he was back again in the dim cabin of the General Morel gazing through the dusk at a long, swinging plait of gold-brown hair.

Sanda, with Captain Amaranthe and his wife, travelled to Oran, thence to Biskra, and from Biskra on the newly finished railway line to Touggourt. It was there that, twenty-two years ago, the beautiful Irish girl who had run away from home to her soldier lover, joined Georges DeLisle and married him. Sanda thought of that, and thought again also that in a few months more Richard Stanton would come to Touggourt for the getting together of his caravan. These two thoughts transformed the wild desert town with its palms, and tombs of murdered sultans, and its frame of golden dunes into a magical city of romance. She felt that some great thing ought to happen to her there. It was not enough that Touggourt should give her a first glimpse of the true Sahara. She wanted it to give her more. Nor was it enough that she should be met there by an escort of Bedouins with a chief's nephew at their head, and negro women to be her servants, and a white camel of purest breed for her to ride, she being hidden like an Arab princess in a red-curtained bassourah. All this was wonderful, and thrilling as an Eastern story of the Middle Ages; but it meant nothing to her heart. And something deep down in her expected more of Touggourt even than this. She told herself that a place with such associations owed more to a child of Georges DeLisle and Sanda De Lisle; and even when she and her cavalcade started away from the great oasis city, winding southward among the dunes, she still had the conviction that some day, before very long, Touggourt would pay its debt.

Ben Râana had done what he could to honour Colonel DeLisle through his daughter. He had sent a fine caravan to fetch the girl to Djazerta, and according to the ideas of desert travellers, no luxury was lacking for her comfort. His half-sister's son, Sidi Tahar Ben Hadj, had under him some of the best men of the Agha's goum, and there were a pair of giant, ink-black eunuchs to guard the guest and her two negresses. Silky-soft rugs from Persia lined her bassourah on the side where she would sit, the balance being kept on the other by her luggage wrapped in bundles; and the whole was curtained with sumptuous djerbi, striped in rainbow tints. Over the djerbi, to protect her from the sun, or wind and blowing sand, were hung heavy rugs made by the women of the Djebel Amour mountains, the red and blue folds ornamented by long strands and woollen tassels of kaleidoscopic colours. Sanda's camel (like that of Ben Hadj and the one which carried the two negresses) was a mehari, an animal of race, as superior to ordinary beasts of burden as an eagle is nobler than a domestic fowl. There was a musician among the camel-drivers, chosen especially—so said Ben Hadj—because he knew and could sing a hundred famous songs of love and war. Also he was master of the Arab flute, and the räita, "Muezzin of Satan," strange instrument of the wicked voice that can cry down all other voices.

Lest the men should misunderstand and think lightly of the Agha's guest, his nephew did not look upon Sanda's face after the hour of meeting her at Touggourt, in the presence of her friends, until he had brought the girl to his uncle's house, three days later. She was waited upon only by the women and the two black giants who rode behind the white camels: and altogether Sidi Tahar Ben Hadj was in his actions an example of that Arab chivalry about which Sanda had read. Nevertheless she was not able to like him.

For one thing, though he had a fine bearing and a good enough figure (so far as she could tell in his flowing robes and burnous), in looks he was no hero of romance, but a disappointingly ugly man. Ourïeda, the Agha's daughter, was only sixteen, and Tahar was supposed to be no more than a dozen years her elder, but he appeared nearer forty than twenty-eight. He had suffered from smallpox, which had marred his large features and destroyed the sight of one eye. It had turned white and looked, thought Sanda, like the eye of a boiled fish. He wore a short black beard that, although thick, showed the shape of a heavy jaw; and his wide-open, quivering nostrils gave him the look of a bad-tempered horse. Although he could speak French, he seemed to the girl singularly alien and remote. Sanda wondered if he had a wife, or wives, and pitied any Arab woman unfortunate enough to be shut up in his harem.

On the third morning the great dunes were left behind, and the bassourahs no longer swayed like towers in a rotary earthquake with the movements of the camels. Far away across a flat expanse of golden sand, silvered by saltpetre, a long, low cloud—blue-green as a peacock's tail—trailed on the horizon. It was the oasis of Djazerta, with its thousands of date palms.

At first the vision seemed to float behind a veil of sparkling gauze, unreal as a mirage; but toward noon it brightened and sharpened in outline, until at last the tall trees took individual form, bunches of unripe dates beneath their spread fan of plumes hanging down like immense yellow fists at the end of limp, thin arms cased in orange-coloured gloves.

There was a chott, or dried desert lake, glistening white and livid blue, full of ghostly reflections, to cross; but once on the other side all the poetic romance of fairy gardens and magic mirrors vanished. The vast oasis rose out of earthy sand and cracked mud; and the houses piled together beyond it were no longer cubes of molten gold, but squalid, primitive buildings of sun-dried brick crowding each other for shade and protection, their only beauty in general effect and bizarre outline.

"Am I to live in one of those mud hovels?" Sanda wondered. She was not disheartened even by this thought, for the novelty of the whole experience had keyed her up to enjoy any adventure; still it was a relief to go swaying past the huddled town, and to stop before a high, white-washed wall with a small tower on each side of a great gate. Over the top of the wall Sanda could see the flat roof of a large, low house, not yellow like the others, but pearly white as the two or three minarets that gleamed above the fringe of palms.

Somebody must have been watching from one of the squat towers by the gate—each of which had a loophole-window looking out over the caravan way—for even before the head man of the cavalcade could reach the shut portals of faded gray palm-wood, both gates were thrown open, and a dozen men in white rushed out. They uttered shouts of joy at sight of Sidi Tahar Ben Hadj, as though he had been absent for months instead of a few days, and some of the oldest brown faces bent to kiss his shoulders or elbows.

Sanda saw a bare courtyard paved only with hard-packed, yellow sand; and the long front of the house with its few small windows looked unsympathetic and unattractive. The girl felt disappointed. She had imagined a picturesque house, a sort of "Kubla Khan" palace in the desert; and she had expected that perhaps Ourïeda and her father, the Agha, would come ceremoniously out through a vast arched doorway to welcome her. But here there was not even the arched entrance of her fancy, only two small doors set as far as possible from one another in the blank façade. Sanda's mehari was led in front of the eastern door, which was pulled ajar in a secretive way. One of the big negroes helped her out of the bassourah as usual, when he had forced the white camel to its knees; and to her surprise the other black man made of his long white burnous a kind of screen behind which she might pass without being seen. The women servants—already out of their bassourah—came hurrying along to join her, silver bracelets a-jingle, chattering encouragement in Arab, scarcely a word of which could Sanda understand.

Inside the house was a queer kind of vestibule, evidently intended for defence, with a jutting screen of wall behind the door, and then a passage with a sharp turn in it, and seats along the sides. A very old, withered negro let them in; and still it seemed to the girl an unfriendly greeting for her father's daughter, one who had come so far. But in a minute more she gave a little cry of pleasure, and suddenly understood the mystery. This part of the house was the harem, secret and sacred to the women, since the very meaning of the word "harem" is "hidden."

She had been ushered through a long, dim corridor, with a sheen of pink and purple tiles halfway up the white wall to the dark wood of a roughly carved ceiling, and instead of coming into a room at the end, she walked unexpectedly into a large fountain court, bright with the crystal brightness of spraying water and the colour of flowers, shaded with orange trees whose blossoms poured out perfume.

Perhaps it was not such a wonderful place really, for the house walls were only of sun-dried sand-brick, white-washed till they gleamed like snow in sunlight; and the wooden balustrades of the narrow balcony that jutted out from the upper story were but roughly carved in stars and crescents, and painted brown to represent cedarwood. Yet it was a picture. The stem of the octagonal tiled fountain was of time-worn, creamy marble; the white house was draped with cascades of wistaria, and pale pink bougainvillea; underneath the shadow of the overhanging balcony ran wall-seats covered and backed with charming old tiles of blue and white "ribbon" design; on them were spread white woollen, black-striped rugs delicately woven by Kabyle women; Tuareg cushions of stamped leather, and pillows of brilliant purple and gold brocade silk. Though no grass carpeted the earthy sand, there were beds of gorgeous flowers under the orange and magnolia trees that patterned the yellow sand with lacy shadow, and a girl like an Arabian Nights' princess stopped feeding a tame gazelle and a troop of doves, to come forward shyly at sight of Sanda. She was the soul of the picture for the moment. Sanda did not even see that there were other women in it. Nothing counted except the girl. Everything else was a mere background or a frame.

There was but a second of silence before words came to either, yet that instant impressed upon Sanda so sharply, so clearly, every detail of Ourïeda's fantastic beauty, that if she had never seen the girl again, she could by closing her eyes have called up the vision.

The oval face was so fair and purely chiselled that it seemed Greek rather than Arab. The golden-brown eyes were large and full of dazzling light as the sun streamed into them under the curve of their heavy black lashes. But though they were bright they were very sad, keeping their infinite melancholy while the red lips smiled—the sad, far-off gaze of a desert creature caged. So long were the lashes that they curled up almost to the low-drawn brows which drooped toward the temples; and that droop of the eyebrows, with the peculiar fineness of the aquiline nose and the downward curve of the very short upper lip, gave a fatal and tragic look to the ivory face framed in dark hair. On either side its delicate oval fell a thick brown braid, not black, but with a glint of red where the light struck; and though Ourïeda's hair was not so long as Sanda's, the two plaits lying over the shoulders and following the line of the young bust fell below the waist. The girl wore a loose robe of coral-red silk, low in the neck, and belted in with a soft, violet-coloured sash. Over this dress was a gandourah of golden gauze with rose and purple glints in its woof; and a stiff, gold scarf was wound loosely round the dark head. The colours blazed like flaming jewels in the African sunshine. As the Agha's daughter moved forward smiling her sad little smile, there came with her a waft of perfume like the fragrance of lilies; and the tinkling of bracelets on slender wrists, the clash of anklets on silk-clad ankles, was like a musical accompaniment, a faintly played leit motif. Perhaps Ourïeda had dressed herself in all she had that was most beautiful in honour of her guest.

As usual, Sanda forgot herself with the first thrill of excitement. In her admiration she did not realize that the other girl was self-conscious, a little frightened, a little anxious, and even distrustful. It would have seemed incredible to Sanda DeLisle that any one on earth, even an inmate of a harem, could possibly be afraid of her.

She held out both hands impulsively, exclaiming in French: "Oh, are you Ourïeda? But you are beautiful as a princess in a fairy story. You are worth coming all this long way to see!"

Then the Arab girl's smile changed, and for an instant was radiant, unclouded by any thought of sadness. She took Sanda's little gloved hands, and, pressing them affectionately, bent forward to kiss her guest on both cheeks. Her lips were soft and cool as flower petals, though the day was hot, and the scent of lilies swept over Sanda in a fragrant wave. As she kissed the stranger, Ourïeda made little birdlike sucking sounds, in the fashion of Arab women when they would show honour to a favoured friend. First she kissed Sanda's right cheek, the right side of the body being nobler because the White Angel walks always on the right, jotting down in his book every good deed done; then she kissed the left cheek, since it is at the left side of man or woman that the wicked Black Angel stalks, tempting to evil acts, and hastily recording them before they can be repented.

"Why, you are as young as I am, and white and gold as the little young moon, and very, very sweet, like honey!" cried the girl, in French as good as Sanda's, though with the throaty, thrushlike notes that Spaniards and Arabs put into every language. "I am glad, oh, really glad, that you have come to be with me! Now I see you I know I was foolish to be afraid."

Sanda laughed as they stood holding each other's hands and looking into each other's eyes. "Afraid of me?" she echoed. "Oh, you couldn't have been afraid of me!"

"But I was," said Ourïeda. "I was afraid until this minute."

"Why?" asked Sanda. "Did you fancy I might be big and old and cross, perhaps with stick-out teeth and spectacles, like Englishwomen in French caricatures?"

Ourïeda shook her head, still gazing at her guest as if she would read the soul whose experiences had been so different from her own. "No, I have never seen any French caricatures," she answered. "I hardly know what they are. And I did not think you would be old, because the Agha, my father, told me you were but a baby when he first knew your father, the Colonel DeLisle. Still, I did not understand that you would look as young as I do, or that you would have a face like a white flower, and eyes with truth shining in them, as our wise women say it shines up like a star out of darkness from the bottom of a well."

"In my country they say the very same thing about truth and a well," returned Sanda, blushing faintly under the oddly compelling gaze of the sad young eyes. "But do tell me why you felt afraid, if you didn't think I should be old and disagreeable?"

Suddenly the other's face changed. A queer look of extraordinary eagerness, almost of slyness, transformed it, chasing away something of its soft beauty. "Hush!" she said, "we can't talk of such things now. Some time soon, perhaps! I forgot we were not alone. I must introduce you to my Aunt Mabrouka, my father's widowed half-sister, who"—and her voice hardened—"is like a second mother to me."

She stepped back, and an elderly woman, who had stood in the background awaiting her turn (though far from humbly, to judge by the flashing of her eyes), moved forward to welcome the Roumia—the foreigner.

TWO ON THE ROOF

"Come up on the roof with me, and I will tell you that thing I have been waiting to tell you," said Ourïeda. "Aunt Mabrouka will not follow us there, because she hates going up the narrow stairs with the high steps. Besides, she will perhaps think I really want to show you the sunset."

Sanda had been in the Agha's house for three days, and always since the first evening a fierce simoon had been hurling the hot sand against the shut windows like spray from a wild golden sea. It had not been possible to sit in the fountain court of the harem, the hidden garden of the women, protected though it was by four high walls. Sanda and Ourïeda had scarcely been alone together for more than a few minutes at a time, and even if they had been, Ourïeda would not have spoken. As she said, she had been waiting. Sanda had felt, during the three days, that she was being watched and studied, not only by Lella Mabrouka, but by the girl. Their eyes were always on her; and though Sanda DeLisle was very young, and had never tried consciously to become a student of human character, it seemed to her, in these new and strange conditions of life which sharpened her powers of discernment, that she could dimly read what the brains behind the eyes were thinking.

Lella Mabrouka's eyes, though old (as age is counted with Arab women) were beady-bright and keen as a hawk's, yet she was clever enough to veil thought by wearing the expressionless mask of an idol in the presence of the girls. Sanda had to pierce that veil; and she felt as if from behind it a hostile thing peered out, spying for treachery in the new inmate of the house, hoping rather than fearing to find it, and ready to pounce if a chance came. The stealthy watcher seemed to be saying, "What are you here for, daughter of Christian dogs? You must have some scheme in your head to defeat our hopes and wishes; but if you have, I'll find out what it is, and break it—break you, too, if need be."

No sinister thing looked out from the eyes of Ourïeda, but something infinitely sad and wistful kept repeating: "Can I trust you? Oh, I think so, I believe so, more and more. But it is so desperately important to be certain. I must wait a little while yet."

Always, through the countless inquiries of Lella Mabrouka and the girl about France and England (Ireland meant nothing to them) and Sanda's bringing up, and the life of women in Europe, the visitor was conscious of the real questions in their souls. But on the third day the feverish anxiety had burnt itself out behind Ourïeda's topaz-brown eyes. They were eager still, but clear, and her wistful smile was no longer strained. Whatever the burden was that she hid, she had decided to beg Sanda's help in carrying or getting rid of it. And instinctively realizing this, Sanda ceased to feel that the Arab girl was of an entirely different world from hers, remote as a creature of another planet. The Agha's daughter was transformed in the eyes of her guest. From a mere picturesque figure in a vivid fairy tale, she became pathetically, poignantly human. Sanda began to hear the call of another soul yearning to have her soul as its friend, and all that was warm and impulsive in her responded. A thrill of expectation stirred in her veins when, on the evening of the third day, after the wind had died a sudden, swift death, Ourïeda whispered the real reason for going up to the roof.

Sanda had been looking forward to mounting those narrow stairs (with the steep steps which Lella Mabrouka hated), because Ourïeda had several times spoken of the view far away to the dunes, and the wonderful colours of sunrise and sunset, when the sky flowered like a hanging garden. Perhaps the Arab girl had been cleverly "working up" to this moment, so that the suggestion, made instantly after the death of the simoon, might seem natural to her aunt. In any case it was as Ourïeda had hoped. Lella Mabrouka did not follow the girls.

When they came out on the flat white expanse of roof, Sanda gave a cry of surprised admiration. She had known it would be beautiful up there, to see so far over the desert, but the real picture was more wonderful than her imagination could have painted. The sun had just dropped behind the waving line of dunes and dragged the fierce wind with him like a tiger in leash. All the world was magically still after the constant purring and roaring of the new-conquered beast. The voice of the Muezzin chanting the sunset call to prayer—the prayer of Moghreb—seemed only to emphasize the vast silence. Up from the shimmering gold of the western sky, behind the gold of the dunes, slowly moved along separate spears of flame-bright rose, like the fingers of a gigantic Hand of Fatma spread across the sapphire heaven to bless her father's people. From this flaming sign in the west poured a pink radiance as of falling rubies. The wonderful light rained over the marble whiteness of the distant mosque—the great mosque of Djazerta—and fired the whole mass of the piled oasis-town behind its dark line of palms. The light showered roses over the girls' heads and dresses, stained the snow of the roof, with its low, bubbling domes, and streaming eastward turned flat plain and far billowing dune into a sea of flame.

Sanda's spirit worshipped the incredible beauty of the scene, and then flew northward to the two men whom she loved. She thought of her father, and wondered where Richard Stanton was at that moment. Then Max Doran's face came between her and the man she had named "Sir Knight." She remembered her dream of herself and Max in the desert, and was vexed because she had not dreamed the same dream about Stanton instead.

"How wonderful it is here!" she half whispered, and Ourïeda answered impatiently:

"Yes, it is wonderful; but don't let us talk of it, or even think of it any more, because I have so much to say to you, and Aunt Mabrouka will send to call us if my father comes. Besides, we can see this on any night when the wind does not blow."

She had in her hand a large silk handkerchief tied in the form of a bag; and sitting down on the low, queerly battlemented wall which protected the flat roof, she untied and opened the bundle on her lap. It was full of yellow grain, and she gave Sanda a handful. "That's for the doves," she said. "They will know somehow that we are here, and presently they will come. If Aunt Mabrouka sends her own woman, Taous, up to listen and spy on us she will find us feeding the doves."

"But why should Lella Mabrouka do such a thing?" Sanda ventured to ask, taking the grain, and seating herself beside Ourïeda.

"You will understand that, and a great many other things, when I have told you what I am going to tell," answered the "Little Rose." "From books my father has let me read, and from things you have said, I have seen that Roumia girls are not like us, even in their thoughts. Perhaps you are thinking now that I am very sly; and so I am, but not because I love slyness. It is only because I have to be subtle in self-defence against those who are older and wiser than I am. Everything in our lives makes us women stealthy as cats. It is not our fault. At least, it is not mine. Some women—some girls—may enjoy the excitement, but not I. Perhaps I am different from others, because I have the blood of Europe in my veins. My father's mother was Sicilian. My own mother was Spanish. And he, my father, is an enlightened man, with broader views and more knowledge of the world than most Caids of the south. They all pride themselves on knowing a little French in these days, he tells me, and some have even made visits to Paris once in their lives. But you know already what he is."

"Yes, he is a magnificent man," Sanda agreed, "even greater than I expected from what my father said of him."

She had met the Agha only once, for a ceremonious half-hour on the evening of her arrival at his house, when he had begged permission as of a visiting princess to see and welcome her; yet this punctiliousness was not neglect, but Arab courtesy; and Ben Râana had talked to her of the world in general and Paris in particular, in French, which, though somewhat stilted and guttural, was curiously Parisian in wording and expression. He was one of the handsomest men she had ever seen, scarcely darker in colour than many Frenchmen of the Midi, and marvellously dignified, with his long black beard, his great, sad eyes whose overhanging line of brow almost met above the eagle nose, and the magnificent gray, silver embroidered burnous worn in the guest's honour. He had appeared to Sanda years younger than the widowed Mabrouka; and though she was a dark, withered likeness of him, it was not surprising to learn that Lella Mabrouka was only a half-sister of the Agha, born of an Arab mother.

"You know he has had but one wife, my own mother," Ourïeda said proudly. "That is considered almost a sin in our religion, yet he could never bring himself to look with love on any woman, after her, nor to give her a rival, even for the sake of having a son. I adore him for that—how could I help it, since he says I am her image?—and for letting me learn things Arab girls of the south are seldom taught, in order that I may have something of her cleverness that held his love, as her beauty won it. Yet, if he had married a second wife when my mother died, and she had given him a son, my life would be happier now."

"How can that be?" asked Sanda. "I couldn't love my father in the way I do if he had put somebody else in my mother's place, and spoiled all the beautiful romance."

"My father's romance with my mother was like a strange poem, for she was the daughter of Catholic Spanish people, who had an orange plantation near Blida, and wished her to enter a convent. But my father rode by with some French officers and saw her on her way to church. That one look decided their whole lives. Yes, it would have been a pity to spoil their romance; yet, keeping its poetry is spoiling mine."

"You mean your Aunt Mabrouka. But a stepmother might be worse."

"No, it isn't only Aunt Mabrouka I am thinking of. It is her son, who is my father's heir because he has no son of his own. My father is very enlightened in many ways, but in others he is as narrow and hard as the rest of our people, who hold to their old customs more firmly than they hold to life. My father intends me for the wife of Si Tahar, who met and brought you to our house."

Sanda could not keep back a little gasp of dismay. "Oh, no! it's not possible!" she cried. "You're so beautiful, and so fair. He's so—so——"

"Hideous. Don't be afraid to say the word to me. I love you for it. But because Tahar's not deformed from birth, and the strength and beauty of the line isn't threatened, his looks make no difference to my father. To him it seems far more important that I should be the wife of the heir, so that money and land need not be divided after his death, than that I should love my husband before my marriage. You see, that can hardly ever happen to a girl of our race and religion. If Tahar were not my cousin I should never even have seen him, nor he me. And if I had not seen him, it would perhaps be a little better, for there would be the excitement and mystery of the unknown. We are brought up to expect that; and if already I hadn't learned to dislike Tahar for his own sake and his mother's, I should be no worse off than other girls—except for one thing: the great thing of my life."

Her voice fell lower than before, and her companion on the wall had to bend close to catch the whisper. "What is that thing?" Sanda dropped the words into a frightened pause, while Ourïeda's glance went quickly to the well of the staircase.

"It is what I came here to tell you about," the Arab girl answered. "I forced myself to wait, but now I am sure of you as if you were my own sister. We are going to open our hearts to each other. Do you know what it is to have a man in your life—a man who is not father or brother, and yet is of great importance to you; so great that you think of him by day and dream of him by night?"

"Yes, there are two such men in my life," Sanda replied; and was surprised at herself that she should have said two. More truly there was only one man, not counting her father, who had a place in her thoughts.

"Two men!" Ourïeda echoed, looking shocked. "But how can there be two?"

Sanda felt herself blushing and ashamed before the woman of another race. She tried to explain, though it was difficult, because she had given the answer without stopping to think: indeed, it had almost spoken itself. "I fancy I said that because you asked me about dreams," she apologized. "The man who has been my hero all my life—and always will be, I suppose, though he doesn't care for me and thinks of me as a child—I can't dream of, for some strange reason. He's seldom out of my thoughts by day for very long, I believe; but the other—I hardly know why I mentioned him!—is only a friend, and quite a new friend. He's nothing to me at all, really, though I'm interested in him because of the strange way we met and were thrown together. But the odd thing is, I dream of him—often."

"The women of my people say it is the man you dream of who has touched your soul," Ourïeda said thoughtfully.

"That's a very poetical idea, but I'm sure it isn't true!" Sanda exclaimed. "Now tell me about yourself, because if Lella Mabrouka should send——"

"Yes, I am, oh, so anxious to tell you! But what you said about the man of your thoughts and the man of your dreams was very queer, and made me forget for an instant. I am glad you love some one, for that will help you to understand me, and by and by you will tell me more. Already I can see that you must be almost as unhappy as I am, because you say the one you care for doesn't care for you. That must be terrible, but you are free, and perhaps some day you can make him care. As for me, if I am not saved soon, I shall be married to Tahar and lost forever."

"But surely your father, who loves you so dearly, won't actually force you to marry against your will?"

"He will expect me to obey, and I shall have to obey or—kill myself. Rather that, only—oh, Sanda, I am a coward! At the last minute my courage might fail. The one thing my father would promise was that I should be left as I am till my seventeenth birthday. That very day is fixed for the beginning of the marriage feast. We shall have a whole week of rejoicing. Think of the horror of it for me! I had a year of hope when he made the promise. Now I have less than six months. And in all that time nothing has happened."

Sanda saw by the girl's look and guessed by the quiver of her voice that she was not speaking vaguely. There was something in particular which she had been praying for, counting upon from day to day. And that thing had not happened.

THE SECRET LINK

The Hand of Fatma was gone from the sky. Ruby had turned to amethyst, amethyst to the gray-blue of star sapphire, and the red fire of the dunes had burned out to an ashen pallor. The change had come suddenly while the girls talked; and when Sanda realized it, she shivered a little, with a touch of superstition she had learned from her two Irish aunts. All this cold whiteness after the jewelled blaze of colour was like the death of youth and hope. She pushed the thought away hastily, telling herself it had come only because Ourïeda had threatened to put an end to her own life rather than marry Tahar; yet it would not go far away. Like a vaguely visible, ghostly shape it seemed to stand behind the Arab girl as she talked on, telling the story of her childhood and a love that had grown with her growth.

There was another cousin, it appeared, the son of her mother's sister. He was all Spanish. There was not a drop of Arab blood in his veins, unless it came through Saracen ancestors in the days when Moorish kings reigned over Andalusia.

"You know, now you've been with us even these few days," Ourïeda said, "that the harem of an Arab Caïd isn't a nest of wives, as people in Europe who have never seen one suppose! My father has laughed when he told me Christians believed that. Now, Aunt Mabrouka and I and our servants are the only women in my father's harem; but when I was a little girl, before my mother died—I can just remember her—besides my mother herself there was her sister, whose Spanish husband had been drowned at sea. An Arab man thinks it a disgrace if any women related even distantly to him or his wife are thrown on the world to make their own living. It could never happen with an Arab woman if she were respectable. And even though my mother's sister was Spanish and a Christian, my father offered her and her boy a home. Already his own sister, Aunt Mabrouka, had come to stay with us, and had brought her son Tahar. Neither of the boys lived in the harem of course, for they were old enough to be in the men's part of the house, and have men for their servants; but they came every day to see their mothers. Even then, though I was a tiny child, I hated Tahar—and loved Manöel Valdez. Tahar had had smallpox, and looked just as he looks now, only worse, because he has a bad chin that his beard hides; and Manöel was handsome. Oh, you can't imagine how handsome Manöel was! He was like the ideal all girls, even Arab girls, must dream of, I think. I can see him now—as plainly as I see you in this sad, pale light that comes up from the desert at night."

"Is it long since you parted?" Sanda asked quickly, to put away that persistent thought of trouble.

"We parted more than once, because when our two mothers died, one after another, of the same sickness—typhoid fever—Manöel was sent away to school. He's nine years older than I am—twenty-five now; a little more than three years younger than Tahar. My father sent him to the university in Algiers, because, you see, he was Christian—or, rather, he was nothing at all then; he had not settled to any belief. Tahar was like Aunt Mabrouka, very religious, and did not care much to study, except the Koran and a little French. He went once to Paris, but he didn't stay long. He said he was homesick. Oh, he is clever in his way! He has known how to make himself necessary to my father."

"And Manöel Valdez?" asked Sanda.

"My father loved him when he was a boy, because he was of the same blood as my mother. Although Aunt Mabrouka was jealous even then—for she ruled in the house after my mother's death—she couldn't prejudice my father's mind against Manöel, hard as she tried. Manöel was free to come here when he liked, for his holidays, or to the douar if we were there; and he loved life under the great tent. He had a wonderful voice, and he could sing our Arab songs as no one else ever could. Father wished him to be a lawyer, and gave money for his education, because we Arabs often need lawyers who understand us. But Manöel cared more for music than anything else—except for me. When I was eight and he was seventeen I told him I meant to marry him when I grew up, and he said he would wait for me. I suppose he was only joking then; but the thought of him and the love of him in my heart made me begin to grow into a woman sooner than if I had had only the thoughts of a child. It was like the sun opening a flower bud. When he was away I felt hardly alive. When he came back from Spain to our house or to our tent in the douar I lived—lived every minute! It was three years ago, when I was thirteen, that he began to love me as a woman. I shall never forget the day he told me! I was not hadjaba yet. Do you know what that means? I was considered to be a child still, and I could go out with my aunt to the baths, or with one of our servants, unveiled. I was not shut up in the house as I am now. But in my heart I was a woman, because of Manöel. And when he came home after nearly a year in Seville and other parts of Spain he felt and saw the difference in me. We were in the douar, and life was free and beautiful. For three months Manöel and I kept our secret. He said he would do anything to have me for his wife. He would even become Mohammedan, since religion meant little to him, and love everything. He had no money of his own, but he had been told that he could make a fortune with his voice, singing in opera, and he had been taking lessons without telling my father. A Frenchman—is "impresario" the right word?—was having his voice trained, and by and by Manöel would pay him back out of his earnings. We used to call ourselves "engaged," as girls and men in Europe are engaged to each other in secret. But one day, soon after my thirteenth birthday, Aunt Mabrouka, who must have begun to suspect and spy on us, overheard us talking. She told my father. At first he wouldn't believe her, but he surprised me into confessing. I should never have been so stupid, only, from what he said, I thought he already knew everything. After all, it was so little! Just words of love, and some dear kisses! He suspected there was more; and if I hadn't made him understand, he might have killed Manöel, and me, too. But even as it was, my father and Aunt Mabrouka hurried me from the douar in the night, before Manöel knew that anything had happened. I was brought here; and never since have I been outside this garden without a veil. It was months before I went out at all. And Manöel was sent away, cursed by my father for ingratitude and treachery, warned never to come again near Djazerta or the douar as long as he lived, unless he wished for my death as well as his."

"Have you never seen him since?" Sanda asked, her heart beating fast with the rush of the story as Ourïeda had told it.

"Yes, he has seen me, and I have seen him. But we have not spoken, except in letters. For a whole year I heard nothing. Yet I never lost faith. I seemed to feel Manöel thinking of me, calling me, far away across the desert. I knew that we should meet in life or death. At last, one Friday two years ago—Friday, you know, is the women's day for visiting the graves of loved ones—I saw Manöel. He was dressed like a beggar. His face was stained dark brown, and nearly hidden by the hood of a ragged burnous. But I recognized the eyes. They looked into mine. I realized that he must have been waiting for me to pass with Aunt Mabrouka. He knew of course that whenever possible we went on Friday to the cemetery. I almost fainted with joy; but Allah gave me presence of mind, and strength to hide my feelings. You have noticed how sharp Aunt Mabrouka is. It's the great ambition of her life to see the daughter of the Agha married to her son. Never for one moment has she trusted me since she spied out the truth about Manöel. That Friday, though, I thwarted her. Oh, it was good to know that Manöel was near! I hardly dared to hope for more than just seeing him; but he remembered that my old nurse had a grandson in my father's goum, a fine rider, who first taught him—Manöel—to sit on a horse. Through my nurse and Ali ben Sliman I got letters from Manöel. He told me he had begun to sing in opera, and that if I would wait for him two—or at most three—years, he would have enough money saved to give me a life in Europe worthy of a prince's daughter, such as I am. He would organize some plan to steal me from home, if there were no chance of winning my father's consent, and he was sure it could be done with great bribes for many people, and relays of Maharis and horses to get us through the dune-country. I sent word that I would wait for him three years, all the years of my life! But that was before I knew my father meant me to marry Tahar.

"Not long after Manöel came to stay in Djazerta, disguised as a wandering beggar of Touggourt, my father told me what was in his mind. I feel sure Aunt Mabrouka suspected from my happier looks that I was hearing from Manöel, for she persuaded my father that I was ill. She shut me up and gave me medicine; and I was so afraid Manöel might be discovered and murdered, that I sent him word to go away at once, not even to write me again. He obeyed for my sake, not knowing what might happen to me if he refused, but by word of mouth came the message that he would always be working for our happiness. Well I guessed what he meant! Yet when my father told me about Tahar, all my faith in Manöel could not keep me brave. My father is splendid, but he will stop at nothing with those who go against him. At first he said I must be married when I was sixteen, but I reminded him that seventeen was my mother's age when he took her; and I begged him, "for luck," to let me wait. I dared not warn Manöel, lest they should have laid a trap, expecting me to write him about my marriage. I waited for months, and then it was too late, for Ali ben Sliman was away. I dared trust no one else; and so it is not yet a year ago that I sent a letter to an old address Manöel had left with Ali. I told him all that had happened, and I said, if I were to be saved it must be before my seventeenth birthday, the end of September. After that I should be dead—or else Tahar's wife. Since then, not hearing, I have sent two more letters to the same address, for I have no other. But no answer has come. Now Ali has died of fever, and I can never write to Manöel again unless—unless——"

"Unless what?" breathed Sanda.

"Unless you can manage to help me. Would you, if you could?"

"Yes," answered the other girl, without hesitating. "I'm a guest in the Agha's house, and I've eaten his salt, so it's hateful to work against him. But, some day, surely he'll be thankful to a friend who saves you from Si Tahar. I'll do anything I can. Yet I'm only a girl like yourself. What is there I can do? Have you thought?"

"If I have thought!" echoed Ourïeda. "I have thought of nothing else, for weeks and weeks, long before you came. I begged my father to find me a companion of my own age, not an Arab girl, but a European, to teach me things and make me clever like my mother. He believed I was pining with ennui; and because he had put real happiness out of my life, he was willing to console me as well as he could in some easy way. In spite of Aunt Mabrouka, who may have guessed what was in my mind, he trusts you completely, because you are your father's daughter."

"Ah, that's the dreadful part! To betray such a trust!" exclaimed Sanda.

"But after all, I am going to ask so little of you, not a hard thing at all," Ourïeda pleaded, frightened at the effect of her own words. "It is a thing only a trusted guest, a woman of the Roumia, could possibly do, yet it's very simple. And when the time comes to do it, you need only shut your eyes."

"Tell me what you mean," said Sanda anxiously.

"Every letter you write—not to your father, because he might ask questions, but to a friend—leave the envelope open, and turn your back, or go out of the room. Then don't look into the letter again, or notice if it seems thicker than before, but fasten it up tightly and seal the envelope with wax. Will you do that?"

"Yes," said Sanda, rather miserably. "To save you I will do that."

"You have friends in France who would post a letter if they found it enclosed in one of yours, without explanations?"

"I have friends who would do that, perhaps, but to make it more sure I will explain. It would not save my conscience to let you slip a letter into an open envelope, and pretend to myself that I knew nothing about it; because I would know, and I think I'd almost rather be hypocritical with other people than with myself."

"I told you," exclaimed Ourïeda, "that Roumia girls were different from us even in their secret thoughts! But you will love me, won't you, although you think I am stealthy and sly? I need your love and help!"

"I love you, or I shouldn't have promised what I have just promised now," Sanda assured her.

"But if there were still more—something harder and more dangerous—would you love me enough to do that thing too?"

"Do you mean something in particular that you have in your mind, or——"

"Yes, oh, yes! I mean something in particular."

"Will you tell me what it is?"

"I am half afraid."

"Don't be afraid. Tell me!"

"Hush!" whispered Ourïeda. "Don't you hear some one on the stairs—coming up softly? I must tell you another time. Laugh! Laugh out aloud! Call to the doves!"

The two girls began to chatter together like children. And their young voices tinkling out in laughter sounded pitifully small in the immensity of the night-bleached desert.

Far away in the north where colonist farmers had long ago conquered the desert there was music that evening at Sidi-bel-Abbés, headquarters of the Foreign Legion. The soul of the Legion was speaking in its tragic-sweet voice, and the Place Carnot was full of soldiers sauntering singly or in pairs, mostly silent, as if to hear their own heart-secrets cried aloud by telltale 'cellos and flutes and violins.

The townsfolk were there, too; and when the band played some selection especially to their liking they buzzed approval. It was only the Legionnaires who talked little, and in tones almost humbly suppressed. Once, years ago, they had violently asserted their right to promenade the Place Carnot, and enjoy the music of their own famous band, when local authority would insolently have banished them; but now the boon was won, they were subdued in manner, as if they had never smashed chairs and wrecked bandstand in fierce protest against bourgeois tyranny. Immaculate in every detail of their uniform as though each man had his own servant, these soldiers who spent half their so-called leisure in scrubbing clothes, polishing steel and brass, and varnishing leather, had nevertheless a piteously dejected bearing whenever they passed pretty, well-dressed young women. They knew that, whatever they might once have been, as Foreign Legion men on pay of five centimes a day they were in the eyes of Bel-Abbés girls hopeless ineligibles, poverty-stricken social outcasts, the black sheep of the world. It was to vie with each other and to make the Legion far outshine Chasseurs and Spahis that they sacrificed two thirds of their spare time in the cause of smartness, not because even the handsomest and youngest cherished any hope of catching a woman's approving eye.

Just at the moment, however, there was an exception to the depressing rule. The prettiest girls, French, Spanish, and Algerian-born, all condescended to glance at the bleu who had "knocked out" the former champion of the Legion, and, taking his place in the match with the Marseillais, had kept the championship for the First Regiment Etrangére. Since the day more than a week ago when the barrack-yard of the Legion had been the scene of the great fight—officers looking on in the front ranks of the invited crowd, and soldiers hanging out of dormitory windows—every one in Sidi-bel-Abbés had learned to know the hero by sight; and a blackened eye, a bruised cheek-bone, and a swelled lip (the unbecoming badges of his triumph) made recognition easy. But the Legion was proud of St. George. Not a man, least of all Four Eyes, grudged him his success, such "luck" as had never fallen to any mere recruit within the memory of the oldest Legionnaires, unless in the battlefield, where all are equal.

Max realized fully what this "luck" had done for him, and was aware that eyes turned his way; but, far from being proud, he was half-ashamed of his conspicuousness, fearing that Colonel DeLisle might disapprove. Also, he knew that the small, brief blaze of his notoriety would die out like the flame of a candle. A week or two more and the "little tin god" would go down off his wheels. If he meant to be somebody in the Legion he would have to work as he had never worked in all his life.

With him in the Place Carnot was the Spaniard who had begged for his civilian clothes. They were in the same company and of the same age. From the first glance (given and taken when one man was a recruit and the other did not yet dream of becoming one) something had drawn the two together. Then had come the incident of the clothing; and Max had felt himself an unwilling partner in the other's secret. Later, without exchanging confidences (since "ask no questions, I'll tell you no lies," is a good general rule in the Legion), they drifted into a tacit kind of comradeship, Max admiring the Spaniard, the Spaniard trusting Max.

To-night they walked together in silence, or speaking seldom, like the other Legionnaires, and listening to the music. Suddenly the Spaniard stopped, muttering some word under his breath, and Max saw through the dusk that the olive face had gone ashy pale. "What's the matter, Garcia? Are you ill?" he asked.

The other did not answer. He stood stock still, staring almost stupidly straight before him.

Max linked an arm in his. "What's wrong? Garcia! What's wrong with you?" he repeated.

The Spaniard started. "I beg your pardon," he stammered, dazed. "I didn't realize you were—speaking—to me."

Instantly Max guessed that "Juan Garcia," the name appearing with the "numero matricule" over the bed of le bleu, was as new as his place in the Legion, and as fictitious as the alleged profession of garcon d'hôtel which accounted cleverly for the recruit's stained evening clothes.

"I only asked you what was wrong, what made you stop so suddenly?" Max explained.

"It was that thing the band is playing now," said the Spaniard. "Strange they should have it here already! It is out of the new African opera by Saltenet, "La Naïlia," produced for the first time ten days ago—a trial performance at Marseilles, and on now at the Opera Comique in Paris. Good heavens! Another world, and yet these extraordinary men are playing that song here already—my song!"

"Your song?" involuntarily Max echoed the words.

"My song. If a certain letter hadn't come to me on the night of the last rehearsal but one, and if we hadn't been in Marseilles, rehearsing, I shouldn't be here to-night. I should be in Paris, perhaps coming on to the stage at this moment, where I suppose my understudy is grimacing like the conceited monkey he is."

"By jove!" was all that Max could find to say. But he put several emotions into the two words: astonishment, warm sympathy, and some sort of friendly understanding.

"You wonder why I tell you this?" Garcia challenged him.

Max answered quietly: "No, I don't wonder. Perhaps you feel it does you good to speak. It's strange music!—stirs one up, somehow—makes one think of things. And I suppose you trust me? You can. But don't go any farther unless you're sure you want to."

"I do want to!" burst out the Spaniard. "I've wanted to from the first—since you helped me about the clothes. Only you're a reserved fellow yourself. I didn't care to have you think me a gusher. You guessed why I begged for the clothes?"

"I didn't let myself dwell on it too much."

"You must have guessed. Of course I mean to desert the first chance I get."

"It's a beastly risk. Did you see that awful photograph the colonel told the non-coms to pass around for us to look at, as a warning against desertion?"

"The poor wretch they found in the desert, across the Moroccan border, the man who ran away from Bel Abbés before we came? Yes, I saw the picture. Ghastly! And to think it's the women who mutilate men like that! But I shan't try to escape by way of Morocco. The danger I'll run is only from being caught and sent to the penal battalion—the awful 'Batt d'Aff.' It's a bad enough danger, for I might as well be dead as in prison—better, for I'd be out of misery. But I must run the risk. I enlisted in the Legion for its protection in getting to Africa, because I was in danger of arrest. And you know the Legion, once it's got a man, won't give him up to the police unless he's a murderer. I'm not that, though I came near it. Even while I signed for five years' service, I knew I should have to desert the minute I could hope to get away. I shall wait now till the big march begins, and get as far south as the rest of you go, in my direction—the direction I want. Then I shall cut away."

"God help you!" said Max.

"Maybe He will, though I'm a man of no religion. Is love the next best thing? Everything I've done so far, and what I have to do, is for love. Does that make you think me a fool?"

"No."

"I have to save a girl from being given to a man who isn't fit to kiss her little embroidered shoes—bless them! To save her from him—or from suicide. The letter told me she would rather die than marry him. That's why I'm not in Paris to-night. There'd been other letters before; she said in the one which reached me at the theatre—reached me in the midst of rehearsal—thank God—if there is a God—I still have till the end of September. The crisis won't come till then, on her seventeenth birthday. But what is five months and a half to a man handicapped as I am? Caught in a trap, and with hardly any money, just when I had a fortune almost in my grasp!"

"I can lend you a little," said Max. "I've a few hundred dollars left." He laughed. "It seems a lot here! These poor chaps look on me as a millionaire, a sort of prince, because I've got something behind the daily five centimes—some dollars to buy decent tobacco for my friends and myself, and pay fellows to do my washing and so on—fellows wild with joy to do it! Jove! It makes me feel a brute to think what a few sous mean to them, gentlemen, some of 'em, who've lived a more luxurious life than I have—and——"

"Maybe that's why they're here: because they lived too luxuriously—on other people's money. Tell me, St. George, did you ever hear the name of Manöel Valdez?"

Max thought for an instant. "Valdez? Let me see ... how ... I know, a singer! He sang last winter in New York, in something or other, a small part, and I wasn't there, but I saw great notices. I remember now. Why, you're——"

"Yes. You're right. Don't be afraid to speak. I asked for it."

"Then you are——"

"Manöel Valdez. Saltenet, the man who wrote 'La Naïlia,' wrote the man's part for me, because he thought I could sing it, and because I understand Arab music as maybe no other European does. I was brought up in the desert. The girl I love is a daughter of the desert. God! How that music they're playing makes me hear her call me, far away from behind her ocean of dunes! There's a secret link binding our souls together. Nothing can keep them apart. Saltenet was my benefactor. He has done everything for me. He would have made my fortune—after I'd made his; but that's human nature! And twelve nights ago I nearly killed him because he wouldn't let me go when that girl called—my desert princess! He vowed he'd have me arrested—anything to stop me. And he tried to hold me by force. I knocked him down in his own private room at the theatre where we were rehearsing, and then I had to make sure he wasn't dead, for his blood was on my hands, my sleeves, my shirt front. It was only concussion of the brain, but I hoped it would keep him still, until I'd got well away. That afternoon an officer I knew had happened to mention before me that a lot of men were being shipped off to Oran for the Foreign Legion. I remembered. It was as if some voice reminded me. Africa was my goal, but I'd next to no money. I thought, why shouldn't France pay? Well, here I am! Now you know why I must desert. Wouldn't you do the same in my place? Have you got it in you, I wonder, to sacrifice everything in life for a woman?"