"His wife, as it happens."
There was silence for a moment and then Graham said:
"But he's an awfully nice fellow. I don't wonder at the women all running after him, I should be in love with him myself if I were one. He's a marvellous person really. I don't believe he's ever lost his temper in his life, he's such tremendous command of himself. Animals are just as crazy about him as women. I saw him managing a horse, a vicious brute that no one else could get near. Everest was riding it and it began its tricks, it did everything to make a man in a rage, but Everest never turned a hair. He kept his seat just as if he'd been in an arm-chair, and talked to the animal the whole time and, by Jove! the horse seemed to understand him, he settled down and was as quiet and good as anything. Everest had never touched him once, except to stroke his neck; he'd no whip, no spurs, nothing. I expect that's how he manages his women, makes them do all he wants without a disagreeable word."
"Easy enough," mumbled the doctor, "when a man's so beastly good-looking."
Everest had just caught up with them, so they lapsed into silence, and the camels all sidled together and swung forward steadily into the silver silence of the desert night.
Regina, left behind, stood watching them diminish and diminish into distance with the blood racing madly in her veins and all her brain alight with anger. She did so long and yearn to be there, up beside him on the saddle-blanket, on the camel, swinging, swaying out into wide space, beneath that glorious, star-filled, infinitely arching sky. She loved being with him anywhere, and most of all riding, and on a camel.
The free, giant motion of the animal, the sense of strength and ease with which its great stride goes forward, bearing its burden high above the dust and impediments of the earth, sets the blood glowing and the pulses dancing, and she loved it. Here and now to part with him, to see him going to adventure, danger, risk she might not share, to be condemned to the hot, silent tent, to sit inactive there when all her eager, ardent frame was calling out for deeds, movement, action, hurt cruelly. Her brain was seething in fury and rebellion as she turned her steps slowly back to Sybil's tent.
"Come in and shut the door, do," came the latter's voice from within, peevish with fear. "I feel so frightened. I think they were brutes to go and leave us alone."
"I can't see what there is to be afraid of," returned Regina coldly, entering and letting down the tent flap.
Of another nature altogether, she had no fear of solitude, nor of the desert. She would have lain down anywhere on the sand, her hand on her rifle, her pistol in her belt, and slept like an English child in its cot at home.