A Soldier of the Legion

THE BEETLE

When Max had served four months in the Foreign Legion he felt older by four years. He looked older, too. There were faintly sketched lines round his mouth and eyes, and that indefinable expression which lies deep down in eyes which have seen life and death at grip: a Legion look.

In some ways he had been a boy when he took his sudden resolve in the Salle d'Honneur to prove what the Legion could do for a nature he himself doubted. Now he was no longer a boy. He realized that, though he had never found time to study the success of his experiment, and had no idea that it was being studied day after day by his colonel. Had he guessed, some dark hours might have been brightened by gleams of hope, for in spite of his luck in the Legion there were times when Max felt himself abandoned, a creature of as small consequence to any heart on earth as a half-drowned fly. A more conceited man would have been happier, but Max had not joined the Legion with the object of finding happiness, and one who was watching believed that it would be good for him to wait.

Max and Manöel Valdez (alias Garcia) had looked forward to the great march, already vaguely talked of when they joined. But it had not been a march for marching's sake: its real purpose was more grave. A band of Arab thieves and murderers on the border of the M'zab country had to be caught and punished. No recruits were taken: disappointment for Max and despair for Valdez. He had hoped everything from that chance, and, in his rage at losing it, made a dash for liberty from Sidi-bel-Abbés. He got no farther than the outskirts, the forbidden Village Négre, where he risked a night visit in search of the man bribed to hide a certain precious bundle. Fortunately he was arrested before securing it, for had he been trapped with civilian clothes not even his marvellous voice (the talk of the garrison since it had been heard in the soldier's theatre) could have saved him from the fate of caught deserters: the penal battalion for months, if not a year; death, perhaps, from fever or hardship. As it was, he escaped with the penalty for a night visit to the Arab quarter: eight days cellule. But the clothes were safe. He would try again. Nothing on earth, he said, should keep him from trying again; because he might as well be a "Zephir" in the dreaded "Batt d'Aff," if he could not answer the cry for help he seemed always to hear from across the desert.

Since his first failure and imprisonment nearly four months had passed, and he had tried again and failed in the same way. The second time his sentence was twice as long; but before it was over the medecin major sent him into hospital. He came out emaciated, sullen, dangerous, caring for nothing, not even to sing. Max yearned over him, but could do nothing except say, "It isn't too late yet. Maybe, if we brace up, we'll be taken on the big march that they talk of for the first of September. Even then there'll be time."

He said "we," because it was more comforting to Valdez that their names should be bracketed together as friends; but as Legionnaires they were already far apart. Max had never been censured, had never seen the inside of the prison building (that low-roofed, sinister building that runs along the walls of the barrack-yard). He was in the school of corporals. Soon he would wear on his blue sleeve the coveted red woollen stripe. Garcia, on the contrary, was constantly falling into trouble. He had even drunk too much, once or twice, in the hope of drowning trouble, as Legionnaires do. The September march to the south was ostensibly for road-laying; but there was again a rumour of other important work to be done. The great secret society of the Senussi threatened trouble through a new leader who had arisen, a young man of the far south called the "Deliverer." And when there was prospect of fighting in the desert or elsewhere for the Legion, recruits—even those who had served for six months—were seldom taken if a long list of black marks stood against their names. Max feared that there was little hope for Valdez, though he meant to do what he could to help. And he found it strange that he, a born soldier as he knew himself to be, should think of tacitly aiding another to desert, no matter on what pretext. At home in the same position it could not have been so; but in the Foreign Legion recruits talked freely, even before old Legionnaires to whom the Legion was mother and father and country. There was no fear of betrayal. The whole point of view seemed different. If a man felt that he had borne all he could, and was desperate enough to risk death by starvation or worse, why let him go with his comrades' blessing—and his blood on his own head! If he had money he might get through. If not, he was lost; but that, too, was his own business.

March was bitterly cold in wind-swept Sidi-bel-Abbés. April was mild; May warm; June hot; July and August a furnace, but Legionnaires drank no less of the heavy, red Algerian wine than before the summer heat engulfed them. Max had heard men say jokingly or solemnly of each other, "He has the cafard." Vaguely he knew that cafard was French for beetle, or cockroach; that soldiers who habitually mixed absinthe and other strong drinks with their cheap but beloved litre were often affected with a strange madness which betrayed itself in weird ways, and that this special madness was familiarly named le cafard. When the hot wave arrived he saw for himself what the terrible insect could do in a man's brain.

In the canteen it was bad enough on pay nights—so called "the Legion's holidays"—but there reigned Madame la Cantiniere, young, good looking, a respected queen, who would go on march with the Legion in her cart, and who must at all times to a certain extent be obeyed. But in dim side-streets of the town, far from the lights of the smart, out-of-doors cafés, were casse croutes kept by Spaniards who cared nothing for the fate of Legionnaires when they had spent their last sou. The cafard grew and prospered there. He tickled men's gray matter and kneaded it in his microscopic claws. There his victims fought each other, for no reason which they could explain afterward, or mutilated themselves, tearing off an ear, or tattooing a face with some design to rival Four Eyes; or they sold parts of their uniforms to buy a little more drink, or tried to blow out their brains, or the brains of some one else. Afterward, if they survived, they went to prison; but if it could be proved that they were indeed suffering from cafard, they got off with light sentences.

Officers of the Legion old enough to have won a few medals seemed to respect the cafard and make allowances for his deadly work. If the men did not survive, they—what was left of them—went to the cemetery to rest under small black crosses marked with name and number, their only mourners the great cypresses which sighed with every breath of wind from the mountains.

One August night of blazing heat and moonlight Max could not sleep. There had been a scene in the dormitory which had got every man out of bed, but an hour after the tired soldiers were dead to the world again—all save Max, who felt as if a white fire like the moonlight was raging in his brain.

He lay still, as though he were gagged and bound, lest a sigh, or a rustle in turning over—as he longed to turn—might waken a neighbour. The hours set apart for the Legion's repose were sacred, so profoundly sacred that any man who made the least noise at night or during the afternoon siesta was given good cause to regret his awkwardness. The most inveterate snorers were cured, or half killed; and to-night, in this great room with its double row of beds, the trained silence of the sleepers seemed unnatural, almost terrible, especially after the horror that had broken it. Max had never before felt the oppression of this deathlike stillness. Usually he slept as the rest slept; but now, weary as he was, he resigned himself to lie staring through the slow hours, till the orderly's call, "Au jus!" should rouse the men to swallow their coffee before reveille.

The dormitory, white with moonlight streaming through curtainless open windows, seemed to Max like a mausoleum. He could see the still, flat forms, uncovered and prone on their narrow beds, like carven figures of soldiers on tombs. He alone was alive among a company of statues. The men could not be human to sleep so soon and so soundly after the thing that had happened!

In his hot brain the scene repeated itself constantly in bright, moving pictures. He had been rather miserable before going to bed, and had longed for forgetfulness. Sleep had brought its balm, but suddenly he had started awake to see a man bending over him, a dark shape with lifted arms that fumbled along the shelf above the bed. On that shelf was the famous paquetage of the Legionnaire; all his belongings, underclothes, and uniforms, built into the wonderful, artistic structure which Four Eyes had shown his pet how to make. A thief was searching among the neat layers of the paquetage for money: every one knew that St. George had money, for he was continually lending or giving it away. This one meant to save him the trouble by taking it. Max felt suddenly sick. He had thought all his comrades true to him. It was a blow to find that some one wished to steal the little he had left, though he had grudged no gift.

Just as Max waked the thief satisfied himself that the well-known wallet was not hidden in the paquetage, and stooped lower to peer at the sleeper's face before feeling under the pillow. His eyes and Max's wide-open eyes met. In a flash Max recognized the man. He was of another company, and had risked much to steal into the dormitory of the Tenth. The fellow must be desperate! A wave of mingled pity and loathing rushed over Max. Fearing consequences for the wretch, should any one wake, he would mercifully have motioned him off in silence; but the warning gesture was misunderstood. The thief started back, expecting a blow, stumbled against the nearest bed, roused Four Eyes, and in a second the whole room was in an uproar.

The full moon lit the intruder's face as if with a white ray from a police lantern. Pelle and a dozen others recognized the man from the Eleventh, who could have but one midnight errand in the sleeping-room of the Tenth: the errand of a thief. Like wolves they leaped on him, snapping and growling, swearing the strange oaths of the Legion. Bayonets flashed in the moonlight; blood spouted red, for a soldier of the Legion may "decorate" himself with a comrade's belt, or bit of equipment, if another has annexed his: that is legitimate, even chic; but money or food he must not steal if he would live. It is the Legion's law.

All was over inside two minutes. The guard, hearing shouts, rushed in and stoically bore away a limp, bloodstained bundle to the hospital. Nobody blamed the men. Nobody pitied the bundle—except Max, whose first experience it was of the Legion's swift justice. But nothing, not even exciting prospects of a march, can be allowed to spoil the Legion's rest; and so it was that in half an hour the raging avengers had become once more stone figures carved on narrow tombs in a moonlit mausoleum.

For the first and only time since he had joined Max thoroughly hated the Legion and wished wildly that he had never come near Sidi-bel-Abbés. Yet did he wish that? If he had not come he would not have met Colonel DeLisle, his beau ideal of a man and a soldier. He would be a boy again, it seemed, with his eyes shut in the face of life. And he would miss his sweetest memory of Sanda: that hour in the Salle d'Honneur of the Legion, when she had christened him St. George and called him "her soldier." But after all, of what use to him could be his acquaintance with the Legion's colonel? There was a gulf between them now. And would it not be as well or better to forget that little episode of friendship with the colonel's daughter? She had probably forgotten it by this time. And a Legionnaire has no business with women, even as friends. Besides, Max was in a mood to doubt all friendship. He had had a letter that day—his first letter from any one in four months—telling him that Grant Reeves had married Josephine Doran.

Of course, Grant had a right to marry Josephine; but not to write until the wedding day was safely over—as if he had been afraid Max would try to stop it—and then to confess how he had come with his mother to meet Josephine at Algiers! That was secret and unfriendly, even treacherous. Max remembered very well how Grant had proposed accompanying Mrs. Reeves, and he—Max—had rather impetuously vetoed the arrangement, saying it was unnecessary, and guessing instinctively the budding idea in Grant's mind. It was clear now that Grant had never abandoned it, that he had from the first planned a campaign to win the heiress before any other man had a chance with her, and that he had carried out the scheme with never a hitch. The letter, written on the eve of the wedding, had been three weeks on the way. Grant (the only person except Edwin Reeves to whom Max had revealed himself as Maxime St. George, Number 1033, in the Tenth Company, First Regiment of the Foreign Legion) wrote that he was telling nobody where his friend was, or what he had done. "The day will surely come, dear boy," Grant said—and Max could almost hear his voice speaking—"when you will wish to blot out these pages from your book of life. I want to make it easy for you to do so; and I advise you to keep your present resolve: confide in none of your pals. They might not be as discreet as the governor and I."

"He's glad I'm out of the way," thought Max. "He wants me to be forgotten by every one, and he wants to forget me himself. If I were on the spot, poor, and hustling to get on somehow or other in business, it might worry him a little to be seen spending money that used to be mine."

Perhaps it was morbid to attribute these motives to Grant Reeves, who had once been his friend, but he did attribute them; and conscious that he was actually encouraging morbid thoughts, Max wondered if he, too, were getting the cafard, the madness of the Legion? Lying there, the only waking one among the sleepers, fear of unseen, mysterious things, the fear that sometimes attacks a brave man in the night, leaped at him out of the shadows. He could almost feel the sharp little claws of the dreaded beetle scratching in his brain. Yes, he'd been a fool to join the Legion, and to hand over Jack Doran's house and fortune to Grant Reeves! It was impossible that Grant had married Josephine for love. He had simply taken her with the money, and he meant to have the spending of it.

In the letter, Grant said that they planned to alter the old Doran house and "bring it up to date." It was he, Grant, who had all the ideas, apparently. Josephine was letting him do as he pleased. What should she know about such matters? If she could have all the dresses and jewels and fur she wanted, Grant would be allowed to go his own way with other things. He was clever enough to understand that, and to manage Josephine.

With the letter Grant had posted a bundle of Sunday newspapers and illustrated magazines, such a bundle of old news as one sends to an invalid in hospital. Max had glanced through some of the papers before going to bed, looking with a sad, far-off sort of interest at portraits of people whose names he knew. There had been a page of "America's most beautiful actresses" in one Sunday supplement, and among them, of course, was Billie Brookton. No such page would be complete without her! It was a new photograph that Max had never seen. The smiling face, head drooped slightly in order to give Billie's celebrated upward look from under level brows, had the place of honour in the middle of the page. And a paragraph beneath announced that Billie would leave the stage on her marriage with "Millionaire Jeff Houston, of Chicago."

No doubt Houston was the man she had mentioned in her last letter. Round her neck, in the picture, Max thought he recognized his pearls, and on the pretty hand, raised to play with a rope of bigger pearls—"Millionaire Houston's" perhaps—was the ring Max had given her the night when the telegram came. The photograph, which was large and clearly reproduced, showed the curiously shaped stone on the middle finger of Billie's left hand. A large round pearl adorned the finger on which Max had once hoped she might wear the blue diamond, a pearl so conspicuous that the original of the picture appeared to display it purposely. "Millionaire Houston" would be flattered; and that was what Billie Brookton wanted. As for what Max Doran might think if he saw the portrait, why should she care? For her, he was numbered with the dead.

Max was no longer in love with Billie. The shock of Rose Doran's terrible accident, the story she had to tell, and her death, had chilled the fire of what he thought was love. The letter of farewell had put it out. But the scar of the burn sometimes hurts. To-night was one of those times; and Max believed that his disappointment in Billie had had its influence in driving him to the Legion. She stood now as a type of what was mercenary, calculating, and false in womankind, just as (almost unknown to himself) Sanda DeLisle stood for what was gentle, yet brave and true. He felt that Billie Brookton had made him hard, with a hardness that was not good; and that not only she, but all those he had cared for most in his old life, had deceived and tricked or at best forgotten him. Lying in his narrow bunk, Max lifted his head and let his eyes wander over the faces of his comrades, turned to gray stone by the moonlight. Not one which was not sad, except that of the Alsatian who had joined on the day of his own recruitment. The boy was smiling in some dream and looked like a child, but a sickly child, for the heat and the severe marching drill for les bleus were telling upon him. Faces of twenty different types, faces which by day masked their secrets with sullenness, defiance, or stolidity, could hide nothing in sleep, but fell into lines of sadness that gave a strange family resemblance to the stone soldiers on the tombs. Saddest of all, after Manöel Valdez, perhaps, was the wrecked visage of Pelle, whose own particular cafard had been leading him a merry dance the last few days.

To Sidi-bel-Abbés, with a letter of introduction to the colonel, had come an old officer of the British army, a man of distinction. Pelle, as an Englishman and an ex-soldier, had been honoured by being appointed his guide. The two had recognized one another. Pelle had served under the officer years ago. The encounter had been too much for Quatro Oyos: that, and the money the general gave him at parting. Remembrance of past days was the enemy in the Legion. Four Eyes had been half drunk ever since, and had escaped prison only by a miracle. That, however, was nothing new for him. He had been corporal twice and sergeant once; each time he had been "broke" because of drink. In spite of all, he had stuck to the Legion. There was no other place for him on earth. The Legion was his country now—his only country and his only home. His medals he had asked Max to keep till he "settled down again." They mustn't go to the places where the cafard would take him. They mustn't risk disgrace through things which the cafard might make him do. He looked like the ruin of a man in the revealing moonshine. But to-morrow he would be a soldier again till night came, and sooner or later he would pull himself together—more or less. The medals he had won and his love of sport were his incentives. Yet there were other men who had no medals and no special incentives, and to-night Max felt himself down on a level with those.

"What incentive have I?" he asked, in a flash of furious rebellion against fate, conscious yet not caring that such thoughts spawned the beetle in the brain. Five years of this life to look forward to!—the life he had pledged himself to live. The officers did their best. It was vieux style nowadays for an officer of the Legion to be cruel. But try as they might to break the sameness of barrack life by changing the order of drill and exercise—fencing one day, boxing the next, then gymnastics, target-practice, marching, skirmishing, learning first aid to the wounded, giving all the variety possible, the monotony was heart-breaking, as Colonel DeLisle had warned him it would be. And a great march, when a march meant the chance of a fight, didn't always come in the way of a young soldier, even one whose conduct was unsmirched by any stain. Max did not know yet whether he would be taken on the march that all the garrison was talking of. To-night the beetle in his brain tried to make him think he would not be taken. There was no luck any more for him! And as for his corporal's stripe, if he got it soon, what a pathetic prize for a man who had been a lieutenant in the —th Cavalry, the crack cavalry regiment of the United States Army!

Oh, better not to think of future or past! Better not to think at all, perhaps, but do as some of the other men did when they wanted to forget even as they had been forgotten: take the few pleasures in their reach, do the very things he had been prig enough to warn Valdez not to do! Let the beetle burrow, as a counter-irritant!

"Soldier St. George—my soldier!" a girl's voice seemed to encourage him.

Max heard it through the scratching of the beetle in his brain.

Sanda! Yes, Sanda might care a little, a very little, when she had time to think of him—Sanda, who loved another man, but had promised to be his friend. He thought of her eyes as they had looked at him that day in the Salle d'Honneur. He thought of her hair, her long, soft hair....

"She'd be sorry if I let go," he said to himself. "Jove! I won't! I'll fight this down. And if I'm taken on the march——"

He fell suddenly asleep, thinking of Sanda's hair, her long, soft hair.

And the moonlight turned him also into a stone soldier on a tomb.

THE MISSION

It is the darkest hour that comes before the dawn. Next day Soldier St. George became Corporal St. George, and felt more pleasure in the bit of red wool on his sleeve than Lieutenant Max Doran would have thought possible.

It was Four Eyes who brought him the news, a week later, that his name was among those who would go on "the great march." Four Eyes was somehow invariably the first one to hear everything, good news or bad. Life was not so black after all. There need be no past for a Legionnaire, but there might be a future. None of the men knew for certain when the start was to be made, but it would be soon, and the barracks of the Legion seethed with excitement. Even those who were not going could talk of nothing else. They swore that there was no doubt of the business to be done. The newly risen leader of the Senussi had summoned large bands of the sect to the village, El Gadhari, of which he was sheikh, calling upon them ostensibly to celebrate a certain feast. Close to this village was one of the most important Senussi monasteries. Tribes were moving all through the south, apparently with no warlike intention; but the Deliverer was dangerous. Just such a leader as he—even to the gray eyes and the horseshoe on his forehead—had been prophesied for this time of the world. The Legion would march. And it would maneuver in the desert, in the neighbourhood of El Gadhari. If the warning were enough—there would be no fighting; but the Legion hoped it might not be enough. To be the regiment ordered to give this warning was in itself an honour, for wherever work is hardest there the Legion goes. The Legion must sustain its reputation, such as it is! Desperate men, bad men, let them be called by civilians in times of peace, but give them fighting and they are the glorious soldiers who never turn back, who, even when they fall in death, fall forward as they rush upon the enemy. All the world knew that of them, and they knew it of themselves. They knew, also, that when the moment of starting came men of Sidi-bel-Abbés who drew away from them in the streets and the Place Carnot would take off their hats as the Legion went by. It would be "Vive la Legion!" then.

With each day of burning heat the excitement grew more feverish. Surely this morning, or this night, the order would come! The soldiers whistled as they polished their accoutrements, whistled half beneath their breath the "March of the Legion" which the band is forbidden to play in garrison. Quarrels were forgotten. Men who had not spoken to each other for weeks grinned in each other's faces and offered one another their cheap but treasured cigarettes.

Almost every one seemed to be happy except Garcia. He was among those who would not be taken on the march—he, who craved and needed to go, as did no other man in the Legion! Max feared Garcia meant to kill himself the night when he lost hope, and would not let him go out alone to walk in the darkness. "I don't want to ask if you have any plans," he said. "But there's one thing I do ask: share with me the money I've got left. You may need it. I shan't. And if you'll take it, that'll be proof that you think as much of me as I do of you."

Garcia took it, from the wallet which a man now lying in the hospital had tried to empty the other night. Then Max knew for certain what the queer light in Manöel's eyes meant. He could not help a rejoicing thrill in the other's desperate courage which no obstacle had crushed.

That same night, when the two had separated (St. George reassured, and believing that Garcia had use for his life after all), Max met Colonel DeLisle face to face, for the first time alone and unofficially since they had parted in the Salle d'Honneur. The colonel was walking unaccompanied, in the street not far from the little garden of the officers' club, where the band was to give a concert, and returning Max's quick salute he turned to call him back.

"Good evening, Corporal! I should like to speak with you a minute!" DeLisle cried out cheerfully in English. Max's heart gave a bound. Surely never could the word "Corporal" have sounded so like fine music in a poor, non-commissioned officer's ears!

He wheeled, pale with pleasure that his beau ideal should wish to speak with him, and in English, the language they had used when they were still social equals. "My Colonel!" he stammered.

"I want to congratulate you on your quick promotion," said DeLisle. "It has come to you in spite of your resolution to take no advantage in the beginning over your comrades. I congratulate you on that, too, and on keeping it, now it has turned out so well. I hoped and believed it would be so, though I advised you for your good."

"I know that, my Colonel," answered Max, determined not to presume in speech or act upon his superior officer's kindness. "I knew it then."

"It may seem a pitifully small step up," DeLisle went on, "but it's the first reward the Legion can give a soldier. There will be others. I shall have to congratulate you again before long, I'm sure. Meanwhile, I have a message for you." He paused for an instant, slightly hesitating, perhaps. "It is from my daughter. She is in the south, visiting the daughter of an Agha who is very loyal to France as a servant, very loyal to me as a friend. Because of the march last spring, and again this one, now coming (which I expected for this time, and on which I must go myself), I could not have a young girl like Sanda living in Sidi-bel-Abbés. She is happy and interested where she is, and she has not forgotten you. In more than one letter she has wished to be remembered to you, if possible. To-night, Corporal, it is possible, and I'm glad to give the message."

"I thank you for it, my Colonel," Max said, half ashamed of the deep feeling which his voice betrayed. "I—wish I might be able to thank Miss DeLisle. It is a great deal to me that she should remember me—my——"

"Your chivalry? It would be impossible to forget," DeLisle took him up crisply. Then he dismissed the subject, as Max felt. "Tell me," he went on in the same cheerful tone in which he had called out "Corporal!" "Are you happy to escape the caserne, and get away to the desert?"

Suddenly a wild idea sprang into Max's head. Desperately, not daring to let himself stop and think, he spoke. "I should be happy, my Colonel, but for one thing. Have I your permission to tell you what it is?"

"Yes," said DeLisle. "If I can help you in the matter, I will."

"My Colonel, it's in your power to do me a favour I would repay you for with my life if necessary, though"—and Max began to stammer again—"that would be at your service in any case. The best friend I have made in the regiment would give his soul to go on this march. I know he hasn't always behaved as a soldier ought, but he's as brave as he is hot tempered and reckless. If it could be reconsidered——"

"You mean Garcia?" broke in Colonel DeLisle sharply.

Max was astonished. Instantly he saw that the colonel must have been watching his career. He might have guessed as much from the reward of merit just given him—friendly congratulations and Sanda's message, a thousand times more valued for the delay; and he had begun to realize that he had never been abandoned, never forgotten. But the colonel's knowledge of his friendship with Garcia brought the thrilling truth home, almost with a shock.

"Yes, my Colonel—Garcia," he replied.

"Well, I can make no promise," said DeLisle, speaking now more in the tone of an officer with a subordinate, yet showing that he was not vexed. "But—I should like you to go away happy, Corporal. I'll look into the affair of your friend, and after that—we shall see. Good-night."

Again the salute was exchanged, and the colonel was gone, turning in at the garden gate of the Cercle Militaire. The meeting, and all that had passed, seemed like a waking dream. Max could hardly believe it had happened, that Sanda had sent him a message, that her father had given it, and that he, scarcely more than a bleu, had dared to speak for Manöel Valdez.

That day it proved not to be a dream, for Garcia learned officially that he was to go with his comrades. Max hardly knew whether or not it would be wise to explain how the miracle had come to pass, but there was a reason why he wished to tell. When the truth was out, and Valdez ready to worship his friend, Max said: "I did it before I stopped to think; if I had stopped, I don't know—for you see, in a way, this makes me a traitor to the colonel. I begged him for a favour and he granted it. Yet you and I understand what your going means. I've been asking him for your chance to—well, we won't put it in words! Only, for God's sake, try to think of some other way to do what you've got to do!"

"Even you admit that I have got to do it!" Valdez argued. "To save a woman—it's to save her life, you know."

"I know," said Max. "But there may be some other way than this one in your mind."

"If there is, I'll take it. And now I can give you back your money."

"No! You'll need every sou if——"

"You're the best friend a man ever had!" cried the Spaniard.

At midnight the alarm they were all waiting for sounded, and though it was expected at any hour, it came as a surprise.

"Aux armes!" rang out the call of the bugle from the barrack-yard and waked the stone soldiers to instant life. The flat, carved figures sat up on their narrow tombs in the moonlight, then sprang to their feet. There was no need or thought of discipline with that glorious alarm sounding in their ears! The men yelled with joy and roared from dormitory to dormitory in the wonderful Legion language made up of chosen bits from every other language of the world.

"Faites les sacs. En tenue de campagne d'Afrique!" bawled excited corporals. Everything had to be done in about ten minutes; and though all soldiers knew the programme thoroughly, and young soldiers had gone through it in drill a hundred times, the real thing was somehow different. Men stumbled over each other and forgot what to do first. Corporals swore and threatened; but to an onlooker the work of packing would have seemed to go by magic. At the end of the ten minutes the barrack-yard was full of men lined up, ready for marching, and soldiers of all nations thanked their gods for finding that the cartridges served out to them from the magazine were not blank ones. They had all protested their certainty that this march was for business; and when they had heard that their colonel was going with them they had been doubly sure; yet in their hearts they had anxiously admitted that it was guesswork. Now these blessed cartridges packed full of the right stuff put an end to furtive doubts.

As the companies formed up, the "Legion's March" was played, and the young soldiers who had never heard it, unless whistled sotto voce by old Legionnaires, felt the thrill of its tempestuous strains in the marrow of their bones.

Nowadays the great marches of the Foreign Legion are not what they once were, unless for government maneuvers. When there is need of haste the Legion goes by the railway the Legion has helped to lay; and only at the end of the line begins the real business for which the Legion lives. For the Legion is meant for the hardest marching (with the heaviest kits in the world) as well as the fiercest fighting; and when the Legion marches through the desert, it is "marcher ou mourir."

The cry of the bugles reached the ears of the heaviest sleepers in town; for those who knew the Legion and the Legion's music knew that the soldiers were off for a great march, or that wild air would not be played. Windows flew up and heads looked down as the soldiers tramping the bright moonlit street went to the railway station. So the "lucky ones" of the Legion passed out of Sidi-bel-Abbés, some of them never to return. And perhaps that was lucky, too, for it's as well for a Legionnaire to rest in the desert as under one of the little black crosses behind the wall of cypresses in the Legion's burial ground.

They had to go by the new railway line to Touggourt, as Sanda DeLisle had gone, but instead of travelling by passenger train, the soldiers went as Max had seen the batch of recruits from Oran arrive at Bel-Abbés: in wagons which could be used for freight or France's human merchandise: "32 hommes, 6 cheveaux." After Touggourt their way would diverge from Sanda's. There was no chance for Colonel DeLisle to go and see his daughter, but in a letter he had told her the date of his arrival in the oasis town and the hope he had—a hope almost a certainty—of hearing from his girl there, or having a message of love to take with him on the long march, warmed his heart. It was very strange, almost horrible, to remember how he had felt toward his daughter until the day she came to him, in the image of his dead love, at Sidi-bel-Abbés. He had not wanted to see her. He had even felt that he could not bear to see her. Unjust and brutal as it was, he had never been able to banish the thought that, if it had not been for her, his wife might have been with him through the years. Sanda had cost him the happiness of his life.

He had easily persuaded himself that in any case, even if he had wanted her with him, for her sake it was far better not. Such an existence as his was not for a young woman to share, even after she had passed the schoolgirl age. It had seemed to DeLisle that the only place for Sanda was with her aunts, and passing half her time in France, half in Ireland, gave the girl a chance to see something of the world. She was not poor, for she had her mother's money; and because he wished to contribute something toward his daughter's keep, rather than because she needed it, he always paid for her education and her board. What she had of her own, from her mother, must be saved for her dot when she married; and half unconsciously he had hoped that she would marry early.

After he saw her—the lovely young thing who had run away to him, as her mother had—all that had been changed in an instant. His heart was at her little feet, as it had been at the feet of the first Sanda, whose copy she was.

His time for the next few months was so mapped out that he could not have the girl with him for more than the first few days of joy, for she could not be left in Sidi-bel-Abbés while he was away on duty. He had done the best he could for his daughter by giving her a romantic taste of desert life in the house of a tried friend whom he believed he might trust; but he thought tenderly and constantly of la petite, and of future days when they might be together—if he came back alive from those "maneuvers" near El Gadhari. Approaching Touggourt, the first scene of his life's great love tragedy, he could hardly wait for the letter he hoped for from Sanda. He expected another event, also the pleasure of meeting Richard Stanton, whom he had not seen for years, and who would be, he knew, at Touggourt, getting together a caravan for that "mad expedition" (as every one called it) in search of the Lost Oasis. But if Stanton had cared as much for his old friend as in past days, he had protested, he would have given a day or two to go out of his way and visit the Colonel of the Foreign Legion at its headquarters. He had not done that, and though DeLisle told himself that he was not hurt, his enthusiasm at the thought of the meeting was slightly dampened. He looked forward more keenly to Sanda's letter than to an encounter with his erratic friend. It was good to have something heart-warming to hope for in a place so poignantly associated with the past.

There was plenty for the Legionnaires to do in Touggourt. Having come by rail, their first camp was made in the flat space of desert between the big oasis town and the dunes. They were to stay only a few hours, for the first stage of their march would begin long before sun-up, and most of their leisure was to be spent in sleep. Yet somehow there was time for a look at the sights of the place. One of these was a large Arab café on the outskirts of the town where the trampled sand of the streets became a vast, flowing wave of gold. Four Eyes had been in Touggourt more than once, having marched all the way from Bel-Abbés, long before the railway was begun or thought of. He urged Max to come into the low white building where at dusk the räita and the tomtom had begun to scream and throb.

"Prettiest dancing girls of the Sahara," he said, "and a fellow there I used to know in Bel-Abbés—in the Chasseurs—has just told me there's a great show for to-night."

There were several cafés in Sidi-bel-Abbés, where the proprietors engaged Arab girls to dance, but Max, who had paid one visit, in curiosity, thought the women disgusting and the dancing dull. He said that he had no faith in the Touggourt attractions, and would rather take a stroll.

"You don't know what you're talking about!" Four Eyes scouted his objections. "Haven't you heard the scandal about this Stanton, the exploring man, who's here—our colonel's old pal?"

"No, I've heard that Stanton's at Touggourt. But I've heard no scandal," answered Max. "What has he got to do with the dancing girls?"

As he spoke, it was as if he saw Stanton sitting with Sanda DeLisle at one of the little tea-tables on the terrace of the Hotel St. George at Algiers; the square, resolute, red-tanned face, and the big, square blue eyes, burning with aggressive vitality.

"Everything to do with one of them," said Four Eyes. "That's the scandal. Seems Stanton's been playing the fool. They say he's half mad, anyhow, about a lot of things—always was, but it is a bit worse since a touch o' the sun he had a year or two ago. He's off his head about an Ouled Nail—don't know whether she came here because of him, or whether he picked her up at Touggourt, but the story is, he could o' got away before now, with his bloomin' caravan, on that d——d fool expedition of his you read of in the papers, only he couldn't bring himself to leave this Ahmara, or whatever her crack-jaw name is. The chap that was talkin' to me says she's the handsomest creature you'd see in a lifetime, an' she's going to dance to-night to spite Stanton."

"To spite him?" Max repeated, not understanding.

"Yes, you d——d young greenhorn! Anybody'd know you was new to Africa! These girls, when they get to be celebrated for their looks or any other reason, won't dance in public as a general thing. They leave that to the common ones, who need to do something to attract. Anyhow, Stanton wouldn't have let this Ahmara dance in a café before a crowd of nomads from the desert. She lives with the dancing lot, because there's some law or other about that for these girls, but that's all, till to-night. There's been a row, my old pal told me, because Stanton gives my lady the tip not to come near or pretend to know him while his friend the colonel is here. She's in such a beast of a rage she's announced to the owner of the café that she'll dance to-night; and I bet every man in Touggourt except Stanton and DeLisle'll be there. You'll come, won't you?"

"Yes, I'll come," said Max. He was ashamed of himself for so readily believing the scandal about Stanton, yet he did believe it. Stanton had struck him as the type of man who would stop at nothing he wanted to do. And Max was ashamed, also, because he felt an involuntary rush of pleasure in thinking evil of Stanton. He knew what that meant. He had been jealous of Stanton at Algiers, and he supposed he was mean enough to be jealous of him still. If Sanda knew the truth, would she be disgusted and cease to care for her hero, her "Sir Knight?" Max wondered. But perhaps she would only be sad, and forgive him in her heart. Girls were often very strange about such things. Max, however, could not forgive Stanton for ignoring the exquisite blossom of love that might be his, and grasping instead some wild scarlet flower of the desert not fit to be touched by a hand that had pressed Sanda's little fingers. He did not know whether or not to be equally ashamed of the curiosity which made him say to Pelle that he would see the dancer; but he yielded to it.

Already the great bare café was filling up. In the dim yellow light of lamps that hung from the ceiling, or branched out from the smoky, white-washed walls, the throng of dark men in white burnouses, crowding the long benches or sitting on the floor, was like a company of ghosts. Their shadows waved fantastically along the walls as they strode noiselessly in, wild as spirits dancing to the voice of their master Satan, the seductive räita. At one end of the room sat the musicians, all giant negroes, the scars and tattoo marks on their sweating black faces giving them a villainous look in the wavering light. They were playing the bendir, the tomtom, the Arab flute, as well as the räita; but the räita laughed the other music down.

This café was celebrated for the youth and beauty of its dancers, and one after another delicate little sad-faced girls, almost children, danced and waved gracefully their thin arms tinkling with silver bracelets, but the ever-increasing crowd of Arabs and French officers and soldiers (tourists there were none at that time of year) scarcely troubled to look at the dainty figures. They were waiting, eager-eyed. If Max had not known beforehand that something was expected, he would have guessed it. At last she came, the great desert dancer said to be the most beautiful Ouled Nail of her generation.

Max did not see how or whence she arrived, but he heard the rustling and indrawing of breaths that heralded her coming. And then she was there, in the square left open for the dancing. All the light in the room seemed to focus upon her, so did she scintillate from head to foot with spangles. Even he felt a throb of excitement as the tall, erect figure stood in the space between the benches, eying the audience from under a long veil of green tissue almost covered with sparkling bits of gold and silver. On her head she wore a high golden crown, and under the green veil fell a long square shawl of some material which seemed woven entirely of gold. Her dress was scarlet as poppy petals, and she appeared to be draped in many layers of thin stuff that flashed out metallic gleams. For a long moment she stood motionless. Then, when she had made her effect, suddenly she threw up her veil. Winding it around her arm, she snatched it off her head, and paused again, unsmiling, statue-still, except for her immense dark eyes, encircled with kohl, which darted glances of pride and defiance round the silent room. Perhaps she was looking for some one whom she half expected might be there. Max felt the long-lashed eyes fix themselves on him. Then, receiving no response, they passed on and shot a fiery challenge into the eyes of a young caid in a gold-embroidered black cloak, who bent forward from his carpeted bench in a dream of admiration.

She was perfect in her way, a living statue of pale bronze, with the eyes of a young tigress and the mouth of a passionate child. The gold crown, secured with a scarf of glittering gauze, the rows of golden coins that hung from her looped black braids over her bosom and down to the huge golden buckle at her loosely belted waist, gave her the look of an idol come to life and escaped from some shrine of an eastern temple. As she moved, to begin the promised dance, she exhaled from her body and hair and floating draperies strange, intoxicating perfumes which seemed to change with her motions—perfumes of sandalwood and ambergris and attar-of-rose.

For the first time Max understood the meaning of the Ouled Nail dance. This child-woman of the desert, with her wicked eyes and sweet mouth, made it a pantomime of love in its first timid beginnings, its fears and hesitations, its final self-abandon and rapture. Ahmara was a dangerous rival for a daughter of Europe with such a man as Richard Stanton.

When she had danced once, she refused to indulge the audience again, but staring scorn at the company, accepted a cup of coffee from the handsome young caid in the black mantle. She sat beside him with a fierce air of bravado, and ignored every one else, as though the dimly lit room in which her spangles flamed was empty save for their two selves. So she would have sat by Max if he had given back glance for glance; but he pushed his way out quickly when Ahmara's dance was over, and drew in long, deep breaths of desert air, sweet with wild thyme, before he dared let himself even think of Sanda. Sanda, who loved Stanton—with this recompense!

As he walked back to camp, to take what rest he could before the early start, he met a sergeant of his company, a tall Russian, supposed to be a Nihilist, who had saved himself from Siberia by finding sanctuary in the Legion.

"I have sent two men to look for you," he said. "The colonel wants you. Go to his tent at once."

Max went, and at the tent door met Richard Stanton coming out. Max recognized his figure rather than his features, for the light was at his back. It shone into the Legionnaire's face as he stepped aside to let the explorer pass, but Stanton's eyes rested on the corporal of the Legion without interest or recognition. The colonel had just bidden him good-bye, and he strode away with long, nervous strides. "Will he go to the café and see Ahmara with the caid?" The thought flashed through Max's mind, but he had no time to finish it. Colonel DeLisle was calling him into the tent.

The only light was a lantern with a candle in it; yet saluting, Max saw at once that the colonel's face was troubled.

"Have I done anything I oughtn't to have done?" he questioned himself anxiously, but the first words reassured as much as they surprised him.

"Corporal St. George, I sent for you because you are the only one among my men of whom I can ask the favour I'm going to ask."

"A favour—from me to you, my Colonel?" Max echoed, astonished.

"Yes. You asked me for one the other night, and I granted it because it was easy, but this is different. This is very hard. If you do the thing, you will lose the march and the fight which we may come in for at the end. Is there anything that could make up to you for such a sacrifice?"

"But, my Colonel," answered Max, "you have only to give me your orders, and whatever they may be I shall be happy to carry them out." He spoke firmly, yet he could not hide the fact that this was a blow. He had looked forward to the march, hard as it might be, and to the excitement at the end as a thirsty man looks forward to a draught of water.

"But I am not going to give you any orders," said DeLisle. "It would not be fair or right. This is a private matter. I have just received a letter from my daughter with rather bad news. I told you she was staying in the house of one of the great chiefs of the south, a friend of years' standing, who has a daughter of her age. I needn't give you details, but Sanda has unfortunately offended this man in perhaps the one way an Arab, no matter how enlightened, cannot forgive. From what she tells me I can't wholly blame him for his anger, but—it's impossible for her to stop longer in his house. Not that she's in danger—no! that's incredible, Ben Râana being the man he is. An Arab's ideas of hospitality would prevent his offering to send a guest away, no matter how much he might want to be rid of her. Yet I can't endure the thought of asking him for a caravan and guard after what seems to have happened. You realize that it is impossible for me to go myself. My duty is with my regiment. Once before, you watched over my daughter on a journey—watched over her as a brother might watch over a sister. That is why I ask, as a favour from one man to another, whether you would be willing to go to the Agha's house and escort my daughter here to Touggourt. I know how much I am exacting of a born soldier like yourself."

"My Colonel, you are conferring on me the Cross of the Legion of Honour!" Max cried out impulsively.

"Then you accept?"

"I implore you to accept me for the service."

"But do you thoroughly understand what it means? We go on without you. It will be hopeless for you to follow us. I give you eight days' leave, which will be ample time for the engaging of a small caravan—three or four good men and the wife of one to act as servant to my daughter—going to Ben Râana's place at Djazerta, arriving again at Touggourt, and returning to Bel-Abbés. I shall have to send you back there, you see. There's nothing else to do."

"I understand, my Colonel. But though I'm sorry to lose the experience, I'd rather be able to do this for you and for Mademoiselle DeLisle than anything else."

"Thank you. That's settled then, except details. We'll arrange them at once, for you must get off to-morrow as soon as possible after our start. Another man must be appointed in your place, Corporal. At Sidi-bel-Abbés you shall have special work while we are gone. There hasn't been much time for thinking since I got the news, but I have thought that out. At first, I may as well tell you, my idea was to ask Stanton to put off his expedition and go to Ben Râana's. But—something I heard to-night turned me against that plan. I should like to have another man with you out of the regiment in case of trouble. Not that there can be trouble! But I shouldn't feel justified in asking for a second volunteer. All the men are so keen! It's bad enough to send one away on a private matter of my own, and——"

In his flush of excitement the soldier interrupted his colonel.

"Sir, I know of one! My friend would be glad to go with me!"

"You speak of Garcia again?"

"Yes, my Colonel."

"Are you sure of him?"

"I am sure."

"Very well. Talk to him then. Come back to me afterward, and I'll give you all instructions."

The name of the Agha and the name of the place where he lived were ringing through Max's head. Ben Râana—Djazerta!

The father of the girl Manöel Valdez loved and must save was the Agha of Djazerta. Now Valdez need not desert!

GONE

There was keen curiosity and even jealousy concerning the errand which suddenly separated Corporal St. George and his chum Juan Garcia from the march of the Legion. None of their late comrades knew why they had gone or where, unless it were Four Eyes, who swaggered about looking secretively wise.

"I told St. George," said he to such young men of the Tenth as were admitted to the honour of speech with the ex-champion, "I told St. George to fire first at an Arab's face if he got any fighting. That's the way! The Arab ain't prepared, and he's scared blue for fear of his head bein' busted off his body. If that happens only his head goes to Paradise and can't have any fun. Nobody but old Legionnaires who've seen a lot of service have got that tip."

Because of Four Eyes' hints the story went round that St. George and Garcia had been sent off on special reconnaissance duty. And the Legion marched as only the Legion can, with its heavy kit, its wonderful tricks to cure footsore feet, its fierce individual desire to bear more fatigue than is human to endure, its wild gayety, its moods of sullen brooding. For a while it expected to see St. George and Garcia appear as suddenly and mysteriously as they had disappeared. But they did not come back. And days and nights passed by; so at last, as the Legion drew nearer to El Gadhari, the absent pair were talked of no more. There was much to think of and to suffer, and it was not strange if they were half-forgotten except by two men: one who knew the secret and one who pretended to know: Colonel DeLisle and Four Eyes.

When Corporal St. George arrived at the oasis town of Djazerta he had with him in his small caravan no other man in the uniform of the Legion. He had only camel-drivers in white or brown burnouses, nomads who live in tents, and whose womenfolk go unveiled without losing the respect of men. They had come from the black tents outside Touggourt, all but one, who joined the party after it had started, following on a fast camel. He was a dark-faced man like the rest, and wore such garments as the others wore, only less shabby than theirs, and none but the leader knew him or why he had come. The Arab fashion of covering the body heavily, and especially of protecting the mouth in days of heat as well as cold, was observed religiously by this tall, grave person. The one woman of the band, Khadra, wife of the chief camel-driver, wondered if the stranger had any disfigurement; but her husband smiled a superior smile, remarking that women have room in their minds only for curiosity about what can never concern them. As for the newcomer, he was as other men, though not as pleasant a companion as some. According to his own account, he had been born in Djazerta, though he had lived in many places and learned French and Spanish in order to make money as an interpreter.

When the caravan reached Djazerta they found the oasis town indulging in festivities because of the marriage of the Agha's daughter. The customary week of feasting and rejoicing was at its height, but, to the disappointment of every one, the bride and all the Agha's family had in the midst of the celebrations suddenly gone out to the douar, the desert encampment of the tribe over which Ben Râana ruled as chief. This was unprecedented for the wedding of great personages that the end of the entertainment should take place in the douar; but it was said that the bride was ill with over-excitement, and rather than put off the marriage, her father had decided to try the effect of desert air.

This was the news which was told to Max at the Agha's gates after his forced march from Touggourt. It was translated for him into French by his interpreter, the dark-faced man who covered his mouth even more closely than did the dwellers in the black tents near Touggourt; for Max, though he had studied Arabic of nights in the Legion's library, and taken lessons from Garcia, could not yet understand the desert dialects when spoken quickly. An interpreter was a real necessity for him on a desert journey with Arabs to command, and as the two talked together outside the open gate in the high white wall, discussing the situation, neither the Agha's men nor any man of the caravan could understand a word. The language they used was a mystery. French, English, Spanish—all were jargons to these people of the southern desert.

"At the douar!" Max repeated. "Where is it?"

"Not twenty miles away," answered Manöel, keeping all feeling out of his voice, as an interpreter should. "But it's between here and Touggourt. Not exactly on the way, still we could have reached it by taking a détour of a few kilometres off the caravan track and saved hours, precious hours."

"Never mind," said Max, worried though he was because of the delay that meant something to him, if not as much as to Manöel. "Never mind. We shall be in time yet. They say the festivities are only half over. That means she isn't married. Buck up! I know this is a shock; but it isn't a surprise that the wedding feast should be on. You've been expecting that. You've even been afraid it might be all over."

"But something has happened, or they wouldn't have taken her away," Manöel said.

"Perhaps she tried to escape," Max suggested. "Would it be harder for her to do that at the douar than here?"

"In a way, yes. Here she might be hidden for a while in some house of the village: it's a rabbit warren, as you can see. Whereas, round the douar lies the desert open to all eyes. Still, it's easier to get out of a tent than a house."

"Well, let's be off and see for ourselves, instead of guessing," proposed his friend with an air of cheerfulness. Manöel knew the errand which had brought Corporal St. George (and incidentally himself) to Djazerta at this eleventh hour, but Max and he had never spoken together of Colonel DeLisle's daughter Sanda except casually, as Ourïeda's guest. Manöel, his thoughts centred upon his own affairs, had no idea that Mademoiselle DeLisle was personally of importance in St. George's life. If he had seen that Max was anxious, he would have taken the anxiety for sympathy with him, or else the nervousness of a keen soldier who had only eight days' leave and small provision for delays.

Having finished their discussion, they politely refused an invitation, in the absent Agha's name, to spend the night in his guest house, and started out to retrace some kilometres of the track they had just travelled. This, thought the Agha's head gatekeeper, was a foolish decision, no matter how pressing might be the soldier's business with Ben Râana, for already it was past sunset, and there was no moon. These men were strangers, and could not know their way to the douar except as it was described to them. But what could one expect? Their leader was a Roumi, a Christian dog, and all such were fools in the eyes of God's children who knew that the lesson of life was patience.

WHAT HAPPENED AT DAWN

Sanda DeLisle's short life had not been brilliantly happy. She had known the ache of feeling herself unwanted by the only two human beings of paramount importance in her world: her almost unknown father, and her adored "Sir Knight" and hero Richard Stanton. But never for more than a few hours of concentrated pain, like those at Algiers, had she suffered for herself as she suffered for Ourïeda.

The "Little Rose," defenceless against the men who had power over her fate (as all Arab women are defenceless, unless they choose death instead of life), appealed to the latent motherhood that slept in the heart of Sanda, as in the heart of every normal girl: appealed to the romance in her: appealed to the sympathy born of her own love for Stanton, which seemed as hopeless as Ourïeda's love for Manöel Valdez. Would Manöel come in answer to one of those secretly sent letters? Would anything happen to save Ourïeda from Tahar? The girl brought up to be a Roman Catholic prayed to the Blessed Virgin. The girl brought up to be a Mohammedan prayed to Allah. And the prayers of both, ascending from different altars, like smoke of incense in a Christian church and in a mosque, rose toward the same heaven. Yet no help came; and the summer days slipped by, until at last it was September, the month fixed for the wedding.

With the subtlety and soft cowardice of Mussulman women, young or old, Ourïeda said no word to her father of her loathing for Tahar. When Sanda begged her to tell him at least so much of the truth and trust to his love, the girl replied always dully and hopelessly in the same way: it would be useless. He was very fond of her, for her dead mother's sake and her own. But the fire of youth had died down in his heart. He had forgotten how he felt when love was the greatest thing on earth. Besides, his own wife had been the exception to all womanhood, in his eyes. The child she had left had been his dear plaything, his consolation. Now he counted upon her to fulfil the ambitions of his life, thwarted so far, because she had been a daughter. To have his nephew, his heir by law, become the father of his grandsons, was his best hope now, and nothing except Ourïeda's death or Tahar's death would make him give it up.

"My dear nurse Embarka would kill Tahar for me if she could get at him," the "Little Rose" said one day, calmly. "That would end my trouble, but she cannot reach him, and there is no one she can trust among those who cook or serve food in the men's part of our house."

Sanda was struck with horror, but Ourïeda could not at first even understand why she was shocked. "If a viper were ready to strike you or one you loved, would you think harm of killing it?" she asked. "Tahar is venomous as a viper. I should give thanks to Allah if he were dead, no matter how he died. But since Allah does not will his death, I must pray for courage to die myself rather than be false to Manöel, who has perhaps himself gone to Paradise, since he does not answer when I call; and if a woman can have a soul, I may belong to him there."

Sanda had forgiven her, realizing if not understanding fully the difference between a heart of the East and a heart of the West, and loving the Arab girl with unabated love. Up to the hour when Ben Râana came into the garden of the harem and bade his daughter praise Allah because her wedding day was at hand, Sanda hoped, and begged Ourïeda to hope, that "something might happen." But even to her that seemed the end, for the girl listened with meekness and offered no objection except that the hot weather had stolen her strength: she was not well.

"Let the excitement of being a bride bring back thy health, like wine in thy veins, Little Rose," said the Agha, speaking in French out of compliment to the guest, and to show her that there was no family secret under discussion which she might not share.

"It is not exciting to marry my cousin Tahar," Ourïeda sighed rather than protested. "He is an ugly man, dreadful for a girl to look upon as her husband."

"Thou makest me feel that thine aunt is right when she tells me I was wrong ever to let thee look upon him or any man except thy father," the Agha answered quickly, with a sudden light behind the darkness of his eyes like the flash of a sword in the night. Sanda, knowing what she knew, guessed at a hidden meaning in the words. He was remembering Manöel, and wishing his daughter to see that he had never for a moment forgotten the thing that had passed. The Agha, despite his eagle face, had been invariably so gentle when with the women of his household, and had seemed so cultured, so instructed in all the tenets of the twentieth century, that Sanda had sometimes wondered if his daughter were not needlessly afraid of him. But the unsheathing of that sword of light convinced her of Ourïeda's wisdom. The girl knew her father. If she dared to urge any further her dislike of Tahar he would believe it was because of Manöel, and hurry rather than delay the wedding. Illness was the only possible plea, and even to that Ben Râana seemed to attach little importance. Marriage meant change and new interests. It should be a tonic for a Rose drooping in the garden of her father's harem.

"Thou seest for thyself that it is no use to plead," whispered Ourïeda when her father had gone, and Leila Mabrouka and her woman, Taous, on the overhanging balcony, were loudly discussing details of the feast. "Now, at last, is the time to tell the thing I waited to tell, till the worst should come: the thing thou couldst do for me, which would be even harder to do, and take more courage—oh! far more courage!—than leaving the letters open."

The look in Ourïeda's eyes of topaz brown was more tragic, more strangely fatal than Sanda had ever seen it yet, even on the roof in the sunset when the story of Manöel had been told. The heart of her friend felt like a clock that is running down. She was afraid to know the thing which Ourïeda wanted her to do; yet she must know—and make up her mind. It seemed as if there were nothing she could refuse, still——

"What is it you mean?" she whispered back, the two heads leaning together over a frame of bright embroidery in Ourïeda's lap, and the tinkle of the fountain drowning the soft voices, even if the chatter at the door of Leila Mabrouka's room above had not covered the secret words.

"When I said there was a thing I would ask, if the worst came," Ourïeda repeated, "I meant one of two things. If thou wilt do either, they are for thee to choose between. But thou wilt think them both terrible, and my only hope is that thou lovest me."

"You know I do," Sanda breathed.

"Enough to do what I am too poor a coward to do for myself, and Embarka has refused to do?"

"Not—oh, no, no, you can't mean——"

"Yes, thou hast guessed. No one need ever suspect. I would think of a way. I've thought of one already. There'd be no pain for me. And yet—I suppose because I am young and my blood runs hot in my veins, I fear—I am sure—I couldn't, when the moment came, do it myself."

"Even for you, I can't be a murderess," Sanda said miserably, almost apologetically.

"It is thy strange Christian superstition which makes thee call it that. It would be our fate; and thou couldst go away and be happy, feeling thou hadst saved me from life which is worse than death sometimes. Still, if thou wilt not, there is the other thing. Will thou help me to escape?"

"Oh, yes!" cried Sanda.

"Wait till thou hast heard my plan. Maybe thou wilt change thy mind."

"I feel sure I shan't change it."

"But the plan may make thee hate me, and think I am cruel and selfish, caring for no one except myself. Besides, there will be lies to tell; and I know thou dost not like lies, though to me they seem no harm if they are to do good in the end."

"Tell me the plan."

Ourïeda told it, while overhead on the balcony her Aunt Mabrouka—Tahar's mother—chatted of the merchants in Djazerta who sold silks from Tunis and perfumes from Algiers.

The plan was very hateful, very dangerous and treacherous. But—it was to save Ourïeda. The Arab girl proposed to Sanda that she should pretend to have a letter from Colonel DeLisle calling her back at once to Sidi-bel-Abbés, not giving her even time to wait for the wedding. Ben Râana would reluctantly consent to her going: he would give her an escort—not Tahar, because Tahar must stay for his marriage—but some trustworthy men of his goum, and good camels. On the camel prepared for her would be of course a bassourah with heavy curtains: probably the one in which she had already travelled. It went also without saying that Sanda would make the journey in Arab dress, such as she had worn during her visit. Ourïeda would pretend to be ill with grief because her friend must leave her at such a time; already she had prepared the Agha's mind by complaining of weakness. She would take to her bed and refuse to see any one but her nurse, Embarka. Lella Mabrouka, glad to be rid of the Roumia girl (of whom, beneath her politeness, she had always disapproved), and hating illness, would gladly keep out of the way for two or three days, while the wedding preparations went on. It would be easy, or almost easy, if no accident happened, Ourïeda argued, for her to go away veiled and swathed in the bassourah, while Sanda lay in bed in a darkened room. At Touggourt the veiled lady would be met by that Captain Amaranthe and his wife of whom Sanda had spoken: they must be written to immediately and told to expect Mademoiselle DeLisle. Then trouble might come, if they suspected, but perhaps they would not, if Sanda wrote that she had been ill with influenza and had nearly lost her voice. They might send her off by train, guessing nothing, or, if they did guess, she must throw herself on Madame Amaranthe's mercy. No woman with a heart would give her up! And if the plan succeeded, instead of going to Sidi-bel-Abbés she would go to Oran where she could find a ship that would take her to Marseilles. Her jewels (some which had been her mother's, and many new ones given by her father) would pay the expenses and keep her in France, hidden from Ben Râana and beyond his power, until perhaps Manöel found her through advertisements she would put into all the French papers.

As for Sanda, the result for her when the trick was discovered (as it ought not to be until Ourïeda had got out of Algeria) would be simple. She was the daughter of Ben Râana's friend, a soldier of importance in the eyes of France. Colonel DeLisle had entrusted her to the Agha's care, and she could not be punished as though she were an Arab woman. If Embarka or any member of Ben Râana's household so betrayed him and his dearest hopes the right revenge would be death, and no one outside would ever hear what had been done, for tragedies of the harem are sacred. To Mademoiselle DeLisle, however, her host could do nothing, except send her with a safe escort out of his home. And that would be her one desire.

At first it seemed to Sanda that she could not do what Ourïeda asked. With tears she said no, they must think of some other way. And the Little Rose did not argue or plead. She answered only that she had thought, and there was no other way but the one which Sanda had refused. Then she was silent, and the light died out of her eyes, leaving them dull, almost glazed, as if her soul, that had been gazing through the windows, had gone to some dark sepulchre of hope.

It was because of this silence and this look that Sanda changed her mind, after one day and night, all of which she spent—vainly—in trying to find another plan. A letter did come from her father, as she and Ourïeda had hoped it might (Colonel DeLisle, while still at Sidi-bel-Abbés, found time to scribble off a few lines to his girl for each camel post that travelled through the dunes from Touggourt to Djazerta), and in sickness of heart Sanda pretended that she was wanted "at home." The Agha was grieved and astonished, but, great Arab gentleman that he was, would have cut out his tongue rather than question his guest when no information was volunteered. He asked only if she had been in all ways kindly treated in his house; and when with swimming eyes she answered "yes," it was enough. The caravan was prepared to take her to Touggourt, where she would be met by her former travelling companions, Captain Amaranthe and his wife; and the Agha assured her that only the marriage—an event unlucky to postpone—prevented him from sending his nephew as before, or going himself as her escort.

The start was to be made very early in the morning, before dawn, in order that the caravan might rest during the two hours of greatest heat without shortening the day's march; and this was in the girl's favour. Sanda had said farewell to Lella Mabrouka the night before, that the lady need not wake before her usual hour: but not only did she wake; she rose, very quietly, and saw Embarka tiptoeing along the balcony from Sanda's room to Ourïeda's with the new gandourah and extra thick veil she herself had given the guest to travel in. When Embarka was out of the way Lella Mabrouka, in her night robe, pattered softly to Sanda's closed door and knocked. No answer. She peeped in and saw the room empty.

Sanda might have gone to bid Ourïeda good-bye at the last minute: that would be natural; and it was the last minute, because the sky was changing its night purple for the gray of dawn, and from the distant courtyard Lella Mabrouka had heard some time ago the grunting of the camels. (She was a light sleeper always: and afterward she told Ben Râana and Tahar that Allah had doubtless sent some messenger to touch her shoulder at this hour of fate.) She had had no definite suspicions until that moment, except that she was always vaguely suspicious of the girls' confidences; but suddenly an idea leaped into her mind, the suggestion of just such a trick as she herself would have been subtle enough to play. If the Roumia went to the room of her friend to disturb her (though Ourïeda had been ailing for days), why did she not go already dressed, by Embarka's help, for the start, since it was time to set out, and the Agha must be waiting in the courtyard to bid Allah speed his guest? There might be a simple and innocent reason for what struck Lella Mabrouka as mysterious, but she determined to find out. With suddenness she flung open the door of Ourïeda's room (which Embarka, believing Lella Mabrouka safely asleep, had not locked), and by the light of a French lamp she saw the old nurse draping Ourïeda in the Roumia's veil. In Ourïeda's green and gold bed from Tunis lay Sanda in a nightdress of Ourïeda's with her head wrapped up as Ourïeda's was often wrapped by Embarka as a cure for headache.