The Sheik: A Novel

by E. M. Hull

The old Arab had finished his prayers and rose leisurely from his knees, salaaming with a broad smile. All the tribesmen smiled on her, and would go out of their way to win a nod of recognition from her. She faltered a few words in stumbling Arabic in reply to his long, flowery speech, and with a little laugh beat a hasty retreat into the tent.

She paused beside the Vicomte. "Is it another novel?" she asked shyly, indicating the steadily increasing pile of manuscript.

He turned on his chair, resting his arms on the rail, twirling a fountain pen between his fingers, and smiled at her as she curled up on the divan with Kopec, who had followed her into the tent. "No, Madame, Something more serious this time. It is a history of this very curious tribe of Ahmed's. They are different in so many ways from ordinary Arabs. They have been a race apart for generations. They have beliefs and customs peculiarly their own. You may, for instance, have noticed the singular absence among them of the strict religious practices that hold among other Mohammedans. Ahmed Ben Hassan's tribe worship first and foremost their Sheik, then the famous horses for which they are renowned, and then and then only—Allah."

"Is Monseigneur a Mohammedan?"

Saint Hubert shrugged. "He believes in a God," he said evasively, turning back to his writing.

Diana studied him curiously as he bent over his work. She smiled when she thought of the mental picture she had drawn of Saint Hubert before he came, and contrasted it with the real man under her eyes. During the week that he had been in the camp he had forced her liking and compelled her confidence by the sympathetic charm of his manner. He had carried off a difficult position with a delicacy and savoir-faire that had earned him her gratitude. He had saved her a hundred humiliations with a tact that had been as spontaneous as it had been unobtrusive. And they had the bond between them of the common love they had for this strange leader of a strange tribe. What had been the origin of the friendship between these utterly dissimilar men—a friendship that seemed to go back to the days of their boyhood? The question intrigued her and she pondered over it, lying quietly on the divan, smoothing the hound's huge head resting on her knee.

The Vicomte wrote rapidly for some time and then flung down his pen with an exclamation of relief, gathered up the loose sheets from the floor and, stacking them in an orderly heap on the table, swung round on his chair again. He looked at the girl's slender little figure lying with the unconsciously graceful attitude of a child against the heaped-up cushions, her face bent over the dog's rough, grey head, and he felt an unwonted emotion stirring in him. The quick sympathy that she had aroused from the first moment of seeing her had given place to a deeper feeling that moved him profoundly, and with it a chivalrous desire to protect, a longing to stand between her and the irremediable disaster that loomed inevitably ahead of her.

She felt his concentrated gaze and looked up. "You have done your work?"

"All I can do at the moment. Henri must unravel the rest; he has a passion for hieroglyphics. He is an invaluable person; I could never get on without him. He bullied me when we were boys together—at least that is what I called it. He called it 'amusing Monsieur le Vicomte,' and for the last fifteen years he has tyrannised over me wholeheartedly." He laughed and snapped his fingers at Kopec, who whined and rolled his eyes in his direction, but did not lift his head from Diana's knee.

There was a pause, and Diana continued fondling the hound absently. "I have read your books, Monsieur—all that Monseigneur has here," she said at last, looking up gravely.