"I shall be better travelling," Max urged. He would not tell Sanda, but he felt it unsafe to stay long near Dardaï with so few men. The sheikh had been hospitable to Stanton, but things were different now. Ahmara would tell about the money and the boxes and bales full of presents. The temptation virtuously to punish those who were left, for the fate of the explorer, would be too great, and the excuse too good.
"We shall have to get off after the heat of the day," Max insisted. "I've lain here long enough, for, you see, I must be leader now for you. I must talk to the men and tell them what we've decided."
"How little we are in this great desert, to talk of 'deciding,'" the girl exclaimed. "It is the desert that will decide. But—you will be with me always ... as in my dream!"
"And mine," Max added.
Then followed day upon day of the desert dream. Some days were evil and some were good, but none could ever be forgotten. The man and the girl whose dreams had come true never spoke of the future, though waking or sleeping the thought was seldom out of their minds.
"I can't give her up now, whatever happens," Max said to himself sometimes. Yet he did not see how he should be able, in justice to the girl, to keep her. In British territory he would be safe from arrest as a deserter from the Legion. But the very thought of himself as a deserter was torture from which he could never escape. He regretted nothing. What he had done he would do again if he had it to do, even in ignorance of the reward—her love. But he remembered how he had tried to puzzle out some other way for Valdez, and how impossible it would have seemed then, that he should ever follow Manöel's example. He loved Colonel DeLisle and he had loved the Legion with all its tragedies, and been proud of his place in it. He looked upon himself as a man disgraced, and did not see how he should ever be able to make a position in the world worthy to be shared by Sanda. Besides, it would be disastrous for Colonel DeLisle, as an official, if his daughter should marry a deserter. That was one of the things that "would not do." Yet Sanda loved the deserter, and fate had bound them together. The spirit of the desert was making them one. Max did not know that out of Sanda's dreams had been born a plan.
CHAPTER XXX
THE PLAY OF CROSS PURPOSES
When Max St. George, with seven emaciated Arabs and five dilapidated camels, crawled into Omdurman, bringing Richard Stanton's young widow, their arrival made a sensation for all Egypt. Later, in Khartoum, when the history of the murder and the subsequent march of nine hundred miles came out, it became a sensation for Europe and America.