ling mate.

"Curse him! How dare he look at her like that, after Ahmara!" thought
Max. His blood sang in his ears like the wicked voice of the raeita
following the caravan. All that was in him of primitive man yearned to
dash between the two and snatch Sanda from Stanton. But the soldier in
him, which discipline and modern conventions had made, held him back.
Sanda was Mademoiselle DeLisle, the daughter of his colonel. He who had
been Max Doran was now nobody save Maxime St. George, a little corporal
in the Foreign Legion, with hardly enough money left to buy cigarettes.
Ahmara had been an episode. Now the episode was over, and in all
probability Sanda, like most women, would have forgiven it if she knew.
She was happy in Stanton's overmastering look. She did not feel it an
insult, or dream that the devouring flame in the blue eyes was only a
spurt of new fire in the ashes of a burnt-out passion.

She must be mistaking it for love, and her heart must be shaken to
ecstasy by the surprise and joy of the miracle. Max knew that if he
rudely rode up to them in this, Sanda's great moment, nothing he could
say or do would really part them, even if he were cad enough to speak of
Ahmara, the dancer. Sanda would not believe, or else she would not care;
and always, for the rest of her life, she would hate him. He pulled up
his horse as he thought, and sat as though he were in chains. He was,
according to his reckoning, out of earshot, but Stanton's deep baritone
had the carrying power of a 'cello. Max heard it say in a tone to reach
a woman's heart: "Child! You come to me like a white dove. God bless
you! I needed you. I don't know whether I can let you go."

Slowly Max turned his horse's head, and still more slowly rode back to
the caravan which he had halted fifty feet away. For an instant he hoped
against hope that Sanda would hear the sound of his going, that she
would look after him and call. But deep down in himself he knew that no
girl in her place, feeling as she felt, would have heard a cannon-shot.
He explained to the astonished men that this was the great explorer, the
Sidi who found new countries where no other white men had ever been,
and the young Roumia lady had known him ever since she was a child. The
Sidi was starting out on a dangerous expedition, and it was well that
chance had brought them together, for now the daughter of the explorer's
oldest friend could bid him good-bye. They must wait until the farewell