"Hardly yet! Not till daylight," answered Max. "Are you cold? These desert nights can be bitter, even in summer. Won't you let me put something more around you?"
"No, thanks. It's only excitement that makes me shiver. I'm thinking of Ourïeda and Manöel. I've been thinking of them instead of sleeping. But I'm not tired. I feel all keyed up; as if something wonderful were going to happen to me, too."
Something wonderful was happening to Max. But she had no idea of that. She would never know, he thought.
All day they journeyed on, save for a short halt at noon, and Max was happy. He tried to recall and quote to himself a verse of Tennyson's "Maud"—"Let come what come may; What matter if I go mad, I shall have had my day!" He was having his day—just that one day more, because on the next they would come to Touggourt, and if Stanton were there he would spoil everything.
At night they went on till late, as before; but the camel-men said that the animals must have a longer rest. Luckily it did not matter now if they were caught. If Manöel and Ourïeda had escaped they had had a long start. A little after midnight the vast silence of the sand-ocean was broken with cries and shoutings of men. The Arabs, not knowing of the expected raid, stumbled up from their beds of bagging and ran to protect the camels; but Max, who had not undressed, walked out from the little camp to meet a cavalcade of men.
Ben Râana himself rode in advance, mounted on a swift-running camel. In the blue gloom where the stars were night lights Max recognized the long black beard of the Agha flowing over his white cloak. None rode near him. Tahar was not there. Max took that as a good sign.
"Who are you?" demanded the uniformed Legionnaire in his halting Arabic. "In the name of France, I demand your business."
Ben Râana, recognizing him also, impatiently answered in French, "And I demand my daughter!"
"Your daughter? Ah, I see! It is the Agha of Djazerta. But what can we know of your daughter? We left her being married."
"I think thou knowest well," Ben Râana cut him short furiously, "that her marriage was not consummated. I cherished a viper in my bosom when I entertained in my house the child of George DeLisle. She has deceived me, and helped my daughter to deceive."