eep her. In British territory he would be safe from arrest as
a deserter from the Legion. But the very thought of himself as a
deserter was torture from which he could never escape. He regretted
nothing. What he had done he would do again if he had it to do, even in
ignorance of the reward--her love. But he remembered how he had tried to
puzzle out some other way for Valdez, and how impossible it would have
seemed then, that he should ever follow Manoeel's example. He loved
Colonel DeLisle and he had loved the Legion with all its tragedies, and
been proud of his place in it. He looked upon himself as a man
disgraced, and did not see how he should ever be able to make a position
in the world worthy to be shared by Sanda. Besides, it would be
disastrous for Colonel DeLisle, as an official, if his daughter should
marry a deserter. That was one of the things that "would not do." Yet
Sanda loved the deserter, and fate had bound them together. The spirit
of the desert was making them one. Max did not know that out of Sanda's
dreams had been born a plan.

CHAPTER XXX

THE PLAY OF CROSS PURPOSES

When Max St. George, with seven emaciated Arabs and five dilapidated
camels, crawled into Omdurman, bringing Richard Stanton's young widow,
their arrival made a sensation for all Egypt. Later, in Khartoum, when
the history of the murder and the subsequent march of nine hundred miles
came out, it became a sensation for Europe and America.

Rumours had run ahead of the little party, from Kordofan, birthland of
the terrible Mahdi; but the whole story was patched together from
disjointed bits only, when the caravan arrived in civilization. Very
little was got out of the fever-stricken, haggard young man who
(according to Mrs. Stanton) was the hero of the great adventure,
impossible to have been carried through for a single day without him. It
was Sanda who told the tale, told it voluntarily, even eagerly, to every
one who questioned her. She could not give Max St. George--that
mysterious young man who apparently had no country and no past--enough
praise to satisfy her gratitude. There had been terrible sandstorms in
which they would have given themselves up for lost if it had not been
for his energy and courage. Once they had strayed a long way off their
track and nearly starved and died of thirst before they could find an
oasis they had aimed for and renew exhausted supplies. But Max St.
George's spirit had never flagged even