She blushed, and Max hated himself as if he had brought the colour to her face with a blow.
"No," she answered quietly. "I never forget him. But you understand, because I told you everything, that in my heart I can't call him my friend. He doesn't care enough, and I—care too much."
"Forgive me!" Max begged. "All the same I know he must care. He wouldn't be human not to."
"He isn't human! He's superhuman!" She laughed, to cover her pain of humiliation. "I suppose—long ago—he has started out on his wonderful mission. I keep thinking of him travelling on and on through the desert, and I pray he may be safe, and succeed in finding the Lost Oasis he believes in. He told me in Algiers that to find it would crown his life."
"He hadn't started when I left Touggourt," Max said rather dryly.
"What—he was still there? Then my father must have seen him. How strange! He didn't refer to him at all."
"You mentioned that the colonel wrote in a hurry." Max hinted at this explanation to comfort her, but he guessed why DeLisle had not been in a mood to speak of Stanton to his daughter. "There is a reason," he had said, "why I don't want to ask Stanton to put off starting and go to Djazerta." And Max, having seen the dancer, Ahmara, had known without telling what the reason was.
"Do you think Richard may be there when we get to Touggourt?" she asked, shamefaced, yet not able to resist putting the question.
"I think it's very likely." Max tried to keep his tone at reassuring level, though he hoped devoutly that Stanton might be gone. He could not bear to think of his seeing Sanda again after the Ahmara episode. With a man of Stanton's strange, erratic nature and wild impulses, who could be sure whether—but Max would not let the thought finish in his mind.
Sanda suddenly dropped the subject. Whether this was because she saw that Max disliked it, or whether she had no more to say, he could not guess.