"I'd care. It would break my happiness. Father couldn't tell you, as I do, to join us, but I know enough about his interest in you to be sure that in his heart he would wish it, rather than come back to Sidi-bel-Abbés and find you in the Bat d'Aff. I've heard all about that, you see."
Max was silent for a moment, thinking, and Sanda watched his face in the growing light. It was haggard and set for a face so young, but there was still in the eyes, which stared unseeingly across the desert, the warm, generous light that had once convinced her of the man's heroic capacity for self-sacrifice. "He is one who always gives," she thought. And something within her said that Stanton was not of those. He was one born not to give, but to take. Yet how glad every one must be, as she was, to give to him!
Max was greatly surprised and deeply touched by Sanda's care for him at such a time. And he was almost bewildered by the strange answer that had come to his self-questioning. He had felt a passionate reluctance to leave her with Stanton, not only because he himself loved and wanted her, but because her marriage was to be only half a marriage, and because Stanton was what he was. If the man tired of her, if he found her too delicate for the trials she would have to endure, the girl's life in the desert would be terribly hard. Max dared not think what it might be. He had felt that it would tear his heart out to see her going unprotected except by that fanatic, to be swallowed up by the merciless mystery of the desert. But because she had decided to go, and because she thought she had need of no one in the world except Stanton, Max had made up his mind that he must stand by and let her go. Now, suddenly, it was different. She wanted him as well as Stanton. True, it was only because she wished to save him, but she would be grieved if he refused. What if he should accept—that is, if Stanton were of the same mind as Sanda—and let them both suppose that his motive in joining them was to keep out of prison? He knew that his true reason would be other than that if he went. But searching his soul, he saw there no wrong to Stanton's wife. He would not go with that pair of lovers for his own pleasure, and no suffering he could endure, even in the Bat d'Aff, would be equal to seeing Sanda day after day, night after night, when she had given herself to Stanton. All he wanted was to be near her if he were needed. He could never justify himself to Colonel DeLisle or to any one else in the world by telling the truth; but because it was the truth, in his own eyes perhaps he might be justified.
"Have you thought long enough?" Sanda asked. "Can't you decide, and save my happiness?"
Save her happiness!...
"I have decided," Max said. "If Mr. Stanton will let a deserter join his caravan I will go."
CHAPTER XXVI
SANDA'S WEDDING NIGHT
What arguments the explorer used none save himself and the priest from Touggourt would ever know. But the priest came and married Sanda to Stanton according to the rites of the Catholic Church. In his eyes, as in the eyes of the girl, it was enough; for was she not, in the sight of heaven, a wife?