He caught her groping hands, and rising, pulled her gently to her feet, his fingers clenched round hers, looking down at her strangely. Then he turned from her without a word, and wrenching open the flap of the tent, flung it back and stood in the open doorway staring out into the right. He looked oddly slender and tall silhouetted against the darkness. A gleam of perplexity crept into her frightened eyes, and one hand went up to her throat.
"What is it?" she whispered again breathlessly.
"It is that we start for Oran to-morrow," he replied. His voice sounded dull and curiously unlike, and with a little start Diana realised that he was speaking in English. Her eyes closed and she swayed dizzily.
"You are sending me away?" she gasped slowly.
There was a pause before he answered.
"Yes."
The curt monosyllable lashed her like a whip. She reeled under it, panting and wild-eyed. "Why?"
He did not answer and the colour flamed suddenly into her face. She went closer to him, her breast heaving, trying to speak, but her throat was parched and her lips shaking so that no words would come.
"It is because you are tired of me?" she muttered at last hoarsely, "—as you told me you would tire, as you tired of—those other women?" Her voice died away with an accent of horror in it.
Again he did not answer, but he winced, and his hands that were hanging at his sides clenched slowly.