CHAPTER XVI

"_My faint spirit was sitting in the light

Of thy looks, my love;

It panted for thee like the hind at noon

For the brooks, my love_."

SHELLEY.

For some inexplicable reason, the little old lady's trust in Jill's son

was unshakable. Why, she could not have well explained. It might have

been because of his ability to hide his hurt or the memory of his words

spoken as the fortune-teller on the night of the ball, or perhaps

through his self-denial in refraining from using his mother's erstwhile

friendship with the old aristocrat, as a key to the door which was

locked fast between himself and the girl he loved.

After all, such marriages _had_ taken place, thousands of them, so why

should not his with the beautiful girl be added to the list, the

outcome thereof proving the proverbial exception to the inevitable

disastrous ending of all such unions?

Why did he deny himself?

Just because he loved the girl with the same all-sacrificing love his

white mother had given his Arabian father.

If it had been otherwise, with never a second thought he would have

lifted the girl, as doubtlessly his ancestors had oft-times lifted

women in their _gazus_ or raids, and left the consequences in the hands

of that old beldame Fate.

So it had been decided to start the day after the morrow by private and

swiftest steam-boat to Luxor, where Damaris, shepherded by Jane Coop

and under the social wing of Lady Thistleton, would sojourn at the

Winter Palace Hotel until such time as her godmother should see fit to

return from her errand of mercy to the House 'an Mahabbha in the Oasis

of Khargegh.

Thus, whilst Jane Coop slept placidly and Maria Hobson wrestled under

the bed-covering in the last throes of a nightmare in which, as a

camel, she packed parcels of sand wrapped in tissue-paper, in trunks

which stretched across an endless desert, Damaris drove out to the

Obelisk for her last ride on the stallion Sooltan.

She rode out into the shadows, the dawn having barely lifted the hem of

night's purple raiment from the edge of the world; out into the desert

stretching silver-grey, soundless, half-waking; just stirred by the

light touch of the breeze, which, heralding the dawn, sends little

spirals of sand dancing away to the east and away to the west and blows

out the stars one by one.

And she rode listlessly, knowing that no desert would ever be as this

desert, or dawn as this passing of the night, or liberty as this hour

of freedom in the wastes of sand.

And then, when perhaps ten, perhaps more or less, miles out, she pulled

the stallion sharply and sat forward, staring, whilst her heart

thrilled in a most unwarrantable manner beneath her coat.

Upon a hummock of sand, with tattered robes of saffron, purple and of

gold about his feet, there sat a youth.

Sideways he sat, with tips of slender feet to ground as though

preparatory to flight. One fine brown hand pushed back a misty veil

before the face, which shone wanly in the half-light. A strange,

dreamy, cruel face, with crimson laughing mouth, hawk-nose, pointed

chin, and eyes of grey-blue-green: eyes in which the pupils never close

and which under the shadow of the coarse black hair a-grit with sand

shone like twin pools of loneliness hidden in the rocks of Time. The

other hand, outstretched, palm uppermost, held between the curling

beckoning fingers tatters of the veil which, blown by the wind, twined

about the slender limbs and outlined the ribbed ridges of the body thin

to gauntness.

And even as she looked, the hummock showed empty, whilst, half-turned,

upon tips of slender feet, with beckoning hand, he stood a mile off,

perchance more, this youth of crimson, laughing mouth and haunting eyes.

One with the silver-grey and purple of the night, one with the gold and

crimson of the coming day, he drew her, whilst the breeze laughed over

her head and, soughed faintly in her ears, so that she strove to ride

him down, only to find that he was not there; and urged the great beast

further still and at his greatest speed, to see the figure ever out of

reach, with beckoning hand; and little mocking laugh.

And then, with hoofs clattering in the shining bones of some long-dead

fugitive who had failed to reach the oasis, the stallion reared and

wheeled, and, caring naught for the hand upon the reins and with the

bit between his teeth, raced back upon his tracks, leaving the Spirit

of the Desert wrapped to the eyes in tattered misty veil.

Take heed!

So matter at what hour of the day you meet him; be it at the hour of

noon, when the scorpion basks blissfully in the scorching sun; be it at

night, when the white fingers of the moon essay to close your eyes in

the sleep that perchance may have no waking; or at dawn, when heart or

soul, or whatever it be, is like unto running water in its strength,

beware of that gaunt figure with crimson laughing mouth.

Men bewitched as with woman have followed; women bewitched as with man

have followed. You will find their bones if you go far enough or dig

deep enough; and leave yours to bleach with theirs if you have not

strength to resist.

Beasts see it not at all.

So that through a certain unromantic yearning for oats under his

loosening girth, the stallion Sooltan raced Damaris back to the _sayis_

and safety.

She had not understood the import of the apparition in the desert any

more than she perceived the figure of a man standing amongst the ruins,

watching her.

Hugh Carden Ali knew that it was her last ride; the last time she would

feed the stallion with sugar; her last day amongst the ruins of the

City of On.

The blood of his fathers, even that of the men who had swept the desert

for their women, warred with the blood of his mother of a gentler

breed; so that, fearing the strength of the one or the weakness of the

other, he had sacrificed the last ride to the love in his heart.