HERE LIES MY BELOVED
SANA VON SECKT
REST IN PEACE
CARL
“Then he is alive?” turning to her mother with eager eyes.
“Yes, beloved, he is alive. He is now on the great desert. He thought you dead and came to tell me. Then he went away.”
De Rochelle, still weak and exhausted, had gotten from the horse, and came over to Sana.
“Sana, I did not believe you would ever do me the kindness you did. Please forgive me for what I have done. It was I who set fire to this place. I realized that harm might come to you through Amshied, so I set fire to the house, thinking I could help you in that way. I saw the savages take you away, and tried to follow, but fell exhausted. Please, forgive me, Sana, won’t you?”
Without a word Sana turned away. Plead he might, but her forgiveness he would never have. The water she gave him on the desert, she felt, repaid him well enough—had she refused it, he would now have been claimed by the sun and the sand as their own. And in her woman’s mind she knew that he had more to do with the escapade at the home of Amshied than he cared to tell.
Safe at home that night she wrote Carl at his New York address, telling him that she was alive.
CHAPTER IX
ON CAMEL’S BACK THROUGH THE SAHARA
MEANWHILE at sunrise on the day of his departure, Carl had gone to the market place to join the caravan. Among the crowd that gathered there, at the very time the caravan set out, he found Sana’s mother, who had come to bid him goodbye.
From one of the tourists he learned that the caravan would lead over Tandini and Tenduf to Mogador in Morocco. This, he recalled, was the route followed by the crusaders of Islam, when they wandered through the desert lands, to preach Mohammedism with fire and sword.