“What do you intend to do?” she asked. She was remarkably calm.
“I’m going to slip away after dark,” he replied, with a smile, “and walk to El Homra.”
“It’s thirty miles,” she said. “And supposing you get shot or caught...?”
“You can come too, if you like,” he replied. He might have added that this actually was his intention.
She remained silent for some moments, her face a little flushed, her fingers drumming on the table. In spite of her self-control he could see that she realized the danger. “Yes,” she said at length, “I’ll come too.”
He smiled broadly. She caught sight of his strong white teeth, in which the stem of his pipe was gripped.
“I don’t see anything to smile about,” she remarked.
He did not answer. In his mind there was an astonishing sense of exultation. He had had no idea that she would show such quiet pluck: he had hardly dared to think, as he put the graver possibilities of their situation before her, that she would receive the news without a tremor. But now, suddenly, his heart was crying out within him: “This is my mate; this is the woman who will dare all with me”; and he laughed to think of their present absurd relationship. He did not realize how deep was their estrangement.
After the midday meal he sent her to her room to rest, and, pocketing his revolver, went down into the village. Here all was quiet, but he observed that small groups of the revolters were moving to and fro, some of them carrying their antiquated firearms. Ibrahîm, he was told, was more or less a prisoner in his own house, and he thought it politic to make no attempt to visit him.
“Time will show,” he said to an adherent of the usurper, “whether your master is worthy to be Sheikh”; and that was as far as he would commit himself.