“The woman resisted,” he said, “and Mohammed Beyd was forced to shoot her. She is not dead—only slightly wounded. You may go back to your blankets. Mohammed Beyd and I will look after the prisoner;” then he turned and re-entered the tent, and the raiders, satisfied by this explanation, gladly returned to their broken slumbers.
As he again faced Jane Clayton, Werper found himself animated by quite different intentions than those which had lured him from his blankets but a few minutes before. The excitement of his encounter with Mohammed Beyd, as well as the dangers which he now faced at the hands of the raiders when morning must inevitably reveal the truth of what had occurred in the tent of the prisoner that night, had naturally cooled the hot passion which had dominated him when he entered the tent.
But another and stronger force was exerting itself in the girl’s favor. However low a man may sink, honor and chivalry, has he ever possessed them, are never entirely eradicated from his character, and though Albert Werper had long since ceased to evidence the slightest claim to either the one or the other, the spontaneous acknowledgment of them which the girl’s speech had presumed had reawakened them both within him.
For the first time he realized the almost hopeless and frightful position of the fair captive, and the depths of ignominy to which he had sunk, that had made it possible for him, a well-born, European gentleman, to have entertained even for a moment the part that he had taken in the ruin of her home, happiness, and herself.
Too much of baseness already lay at the threshold of his conscience for him ever to hope entirely to redeem himself; but in the first, sudden burst of contrition the man conceived an honest intention to undo, in so far as lay within his power, the evil that his criminal avarice had brought upon this sweet and unoffending woman.
As he stood apparently listening to the retreating footsteps—Jane Clayton approached him.
“What are we to do now?” she asked. “Morning will bring discovery of this,” and she pointed to the still body of Mohammed Beyd. “They will kill you when they find him.”
For a time Werper did not reply, then he turned suddenly toward the woman.
“I have a plan,” he cried. “It will require nerve and courage on your part; but you have already shown that you possess both. Can you endure still more?”
“I can endure anything,” she replied with a brave smile, “that may offer us even a slight chance for escape.”