Her large dressing-case was already packed; but, returning to her tent, she opened it to put into it her little revolver, which, for the fun of the thing, she had purchased in Cairo. This done, she went back to Kate, who received her in cold silence.
“Oh, Kate,” she cried, “don’t be beastly to me. I’m only going to do the sort of thing that’s been done by most of the girls we know. It’s human nature, Kate. When you love a man and feel you absolutely can’t live without him, you’ve got to surrender to him and do what he wants; and I know now that this is what he’s been asking me to do all along.” She put her arms about her neck, and kissed her.
Kate looked at her sorrowfully, and her face softened. “Muriel, you blinkin’ idiot,” she said, “I don’t know what’ll come of this, but whatever happens, old bean, I’m with you.”
[CHAPTER XXV—BREAKING LOOSE]
The road, or rather camel-track, from El Homra to El Hamrân passes across a wide plain of comparatively flat sand, which looks like the bed of a vast lake from which the waters have been drained off. It is a huge hollow separated by high ground from the smaller basin in which the former oasis is situated. Ranges of hills form the boundaries of this area, those to the east being high and many-peaked, the others low and undulating; and from one side of the plain to the other must be something like twenty miles. There are three wells between the two oases, the second being practically in the centre of the plain, and marking the half-way point of the journey.
Muriel and her dragoman reached this well at about one o’clock, when the sun was almost directly overhead and the glare intense. It was a deep pool not more than a dozen feet from side to side; but in the clear water the blue of the sky was so vividly reflected that Muriel, as she stood staring down into it, had the impression that the earth was flat and that she was looking through a hole into further spaces of empty air beneath.
A few yards distant there were some tamarisks, providing a little patch of shade, almost as blue as the sky and water; and a stone’s throw away there was a hillock of sand upon which grew a few low and dusty bushes. With these exceptions there was no vegetation to be seen, and the sand stretched out in all directions, barren and dazzling, until the surface was lost in vaporous mirage, so that the far-off hills looked like islands floating above the haze.
She called her dragoman to her. “Mustafa,” she said, “I’m going to bathe. You must go and sit behind that hillock over there, and you mustn’t move till I tell you you may.”
Servants in the East are ever accustomed to be told to take themselves off in this fashion, when their native mistresses desire to amuse themselves; and he now received his orders from the daughter of the foreign ruler of Egypt without surprise. He quickly filled the water-bottles from the pool, and, telling her that he would prepare the luncheon on the other side of the hillock, walked off across the sand.
As soon as she was alone, Muriel divested herself of her clothes in the shelter of the tamarisks, and plunged into the cool water. Never in her life had she felt so boisterously, recklessly happy; never before had she realized how cramped her existence had been. Here in these empty spaces of the world she was like a child with all the delights of the open garden to herself; and presently she would slip into the next garden and greet there her playmate.