et out
of a tent than a house."

"Well, let's be off and see for ourselves, instead of guessing,"
proposed his friend with an air of cheerfulness. Manoeel knew the errand
which had brought Corporal St. George (and incidentally himself) to
Djazerta at this eleventh hour, but Max and he had never spoken together
of Colonel DeLisle's daughter Sanda except casually, as Ourieda's guest.
Manoeel, his thoughts centred upon his own affairs, had no idea that
Mademoiselle DeLisle was personally of importance in St. George's life.
If he had seen that Max was anxious, he would have taken the anxiety for
sympathy with him, or else the nervousness of a keen soldier who had
only eight days' leave and small provision for delays.

Having finished their discussion, they politely refused an invitation,
in the absent Agha's name, to spend the night in his guest house, and
started out to retrace some kilometres of the track they had just
travelled. This, thought the Agha's head gatekeeper, was a foolish
decision, no matter how pressing might be the soldier's business with
Ben Raana, for already it was past sunset, and there was no moon. These
men were strangers, and could not know their way to the _douar_ except
as it was described to them. But what could one expect? Their leader was
a Roumi, a Christian dog, and all such were fools in the eyes of God's
children who knew that the lesson of life was patience.

CHAPTER XIX

WHAT HAPPENED AT DAWN

Sanda DeLisle's short life had not been brilliantly happy. She had known
the ache of feeling herself unwanted by the only two human beings of
paramount importance in her world: her almost unknown father, and her
adored "Sir Knight" and hero Richard Stanton. But never for more than a
few hours of concentrated pain, like those at Algiers, had she suffered
for herself as she suffered for Ourieda.

The "Little Rose," defenceless against the men who had power over her
fate (as all Arab women are defenceless, unless they choose death
instead of life), appealed to the latent motherhood that slept in the
heart of Sanda, as in the heart of every normal girl: appealed to the
romance in her: appealed to the sympathy born of her own love for
Stanton, which seemed as hopeless as Ourieda's love for Manoeel Valdez.
Would Manoeel come in answer to one of those secretly sent letters? Would
anything happen to save Ourieda from Tahar? The girl brought up to be a
Roman Catholic prayed to the Blessed Virgi