en if they come back. I implore you to go away now.
Do you want me to beg you on my knees?"

"For God's sake, Mademoiselle DeLisle!"

"Then will you go?"

"No! I told you nothing could make me leave you till--after it's over.
What would be the use anyhow, even if I would go? If they're going to
call me a deserter, I'm that already."

"Ah!" she hid her face in her hands, shivering with sobs. "_I've_ made
you a deserter. I've ruined you! Your career my father hoped for! If he
were at Bel-Abbes he'd save you. But he's far away in the desert." The
girl lifted her face and brushed away the tears. "Soldier, _if you don't
go now, don't go at all_! Don't offer yourself up to punishment for what
is not your fault, but mine, the fault of your colonel's daughter. Stay
with me--stay with us! Keep the trust my father gave you, watching over
me. Will you do that? _Will_ you, instead of going back straight to
prison and spoiling your life? Join us and help us to find the Lost
Oasis."

The young man's blood rushed to his head. He could not speak. He could
only look at her.

"You say that already you've made yourself a deserter," she went on.
"Then desert to us, I wanted you to join the Legion, and you did join;
so I've called you '_my soldier_.' Now I want you not to go back to the
Legion. It would be a horrible injustice for you to be punished as you
would be. I couldn't be happy even with Richard, thinking of you in
prison."

"The world is a prison, if it comes to that!" laughed Max.

"For some people. Not for a man like you! Besides, some of the cells in
the world's prison are so much more terrible than others. Come with us,
and by and by, if we live, we shall reach Egypt. There you'll be free,
as Manoeel Valdez will be free outside Algeria and France."

"My colonel's daughter asks me to do this?" Max muttered, half under his
breath.

"Yes, _because_ I am his daughter as well as your friend. Do you think
he'd like you to go back to Sidi-bel-Abbes under a cloud, with him far
away, not able to speak for you? I know as well as if you'd told me
that, if they tried you by court-martial at Oran, you wouldn't defend
yourself as you would if my father had _ordered_ you to give up the
march, instead of _asking_ you to go on a private errand for him with
your friend. Because he did an irregular thing and trouble has come of
it, don't I know you'd suffer rather than let details be dragged from
you which might injure my father's re