must do. If he had not
loved the girl, it would have been easier. There would have been no fear
then that he might think of himself and not of her. Yet she had been put
under his charge by Colonel DeLisle. He was responsible for her welfare
and her safety. Ought he to constitute himself her guardian and stand
between her and this man? On the other hand, could he attempt playing
out a farce of guardianship--he, almost a stranger, and a boy compared
to Stanton, who had been, according to Sanda, informally her guardian
when she was a little girl? Max stammered a few words, not knowing what
he said, or whether he were speaking sense, but Stanton paid him the
compliment of treating him like a reasonable man. Suddenly Max became
conscious that the explorer was deliberately focussing upon him all the
intense magnetism which had won adherents to the wildest schemes.

"I understand exactly what you are thinking about me," Stanton said.
"You must feel I am mad or a brute to want this child to go with me
across the desert, to share the fate all Europe is prophesying."

"It's glory to share it," broke in Sanda, in a voice like a harp. "Do I
care what happens to me if I can be with you?"

Stanton laughed a delightful laugh.

"She _is_ a child--an infatuated child! But shouldn't I be more--or
less--than a man, if I could let such a stroke of luck pass by me? You
see, she wants to go."

"_He_ knows I love you, and have loved you all my life," said Sanda. "I
told him in Algiers when I was so miserable, thinking that I should
never see you again, and that you didn't care."

"Of course I cared," Stanton contradicted her warmly; yet there was a
difference in his tone. To Max's ears, it did not ring true. "Seeing a
grown-up Sanda, when I'd always kept in my mind's eye a little girl,
bowled me over. I made excuses to get away in a hurry, didn't I? It was
the bravest thing I ever did. I knew I wasn't a marble statue. But it
was another thing keeping my head in broad daylight on the terrace of a
hotel, with a lot of dressed-up creatures coming and going, from what it
is here in the desert at night, with that mad music playing me away into
the unknown, and a girl like Sanda flashing down like a falling star."

"The star fell into your arms, and you saved it from extinction," she
finished for him, laughing a little gurgling laugh of ecstasy.

"I caught it on its way somewhere else! But how can I let it go when it
wants to shine for me?