toward her with great strides; but he had not
taken more than three or four when he saw that she was walking slowly
but steadily straight toward him. He felt then, with a mysterious but
complete certainty, that she wished him to go no farther, but to wait.
He stopped, and in a moment she was by his side. She did not speak, but
stood with her head drooping. Max could not see her face. After the
first eagerly questioning glance he turned his eyes away. She did not
wish him to look at her or break the silence. He held his tongue, but he
was afraid she might hear the pounding of his heart and his breath
coming and going. If she did she would guess that he knew something
which, perhaps, she did not mean to let him know. At last, however, he
could bear the strain no longer; besides, Stanton might come back. If
there were anything he could do for her, if she wanted him to take her
away--God! how his blood sang at the thought of it!--there was no more
time to waste.

His tone sounded flat and ineffectual in his own ears as he spoke. The
effort to keep it down to calmness made it almost absurd, as it would
have been to mention the weather in that tingling instant. He asked
simply: "Is there something--something I can do?"

"No," she said. "Nothing, thank you. Nothing any one can do."

The voice was not like the voice of Sanda, which Max had once compared
in his mind to the ripple of a brook steeped in sunshine. It was thin
and weak, almost like the voice of a little, broken old woman. But,
praise heaven, she was young, so very young that she would live this
down, and, some day, almost forget. If she would let him take her back
to Sidi-bel-Abbes after all! This marriage by a priest without sanction
of the law need not stand. She was not a wife yet, but a girl, oh! thank
God for that! It was not too late. If only he could say these things to
her. But it seemed that he must stand like a block of wood and wait for
her to point the way.

"Are you--perhaps you're homesick?" he dared to give her a cue.

"Homesick?" Her voice broke and, instead of being like an old woman's,
it was like a little child's. "Yes, that's it, I'm homesick! And--and I
think I'm not very well. I want my father, I want him so much!"

The heart of the man who was not her father yearned toward the girl.

"Shall I take you back?" he panted. "We're not far past Touggourt.
To-morrow it will be too late, but now--now----"

"Now it's already too late. Oh, Soldi