the passing of his transient desire. She loved him so passionately, so completely, that beyond him was nothing. He was all the world. She gave herself to him gladly, triumphantly, as she would give her life for him if need be. But she had schooled herself to hide her love, to yield apathetically to his caresses, and to conceal the longing that possessed her. She was afraid that the knowledge that she loved him would bring about the disaster she dreaded. The words that he had once used remained continually in her mind: "If you loved me you would bore me, and I should have to let you go." And she hid her love closely in her heart. It was difficult, and it hurt her to hide it from him and to assume indifference. It was difficult to remember that she must make a show of reluctance when she was longing to give unreservedly. She dropped the end of the cigarette hissing into the dregs of the coffee and turned a page, and, as she did so, she looked up suddenly, the magazine dropping unheeded on the floor. Close outside the tent the same low, vibrating baritone was singing the Kashmiri love song that she had heard last the night before she left Biskra. She sat tense, her eyes growing puzzled. _"Pale hands I loved beside the Shalimar. Where are you now? Who lies beneath your spell?"_ The voice came nearer and he swept in, still singing, and came to her. _"Pale hands, pink tipped,"_ he sang, stopping in front of her and catching her fingers in his up to his lips, but she tore them away before he kissed them. "You do know English?" she cried sharply, her eyes searching his. He flung himself on the divan beside her with a laugh. "Because I sing an English song?" he replied in French. "_La! la!_ I heard a Spanish boy singing in 'Carmen' once in Paris who did not know a word of French beside the score. He learned it parrot-like, as I learn your English songs," he added, smiling. She watched him light a cigarette, and her forehead wrinkled thoughtfully. "It was you who sang outside the hotel in Biskra that night?" she asked at last, more statement than question. "One is mad sometimes, especially when the moon is high," he replied teasingly. "And was it you who came into my bedroom and put the blank cartridges in my revolver?" His arm stole round her, drawing her to him, and he lifted her head up so that he could look into her eyes. "Do you think that--I would have allowed anybody else to go to your room at night?--I, an Arab, when I meant you for myself?" "You were so sure?" He laughed softly, as if the suggestion that any plan of his could be liable to miscarriage amused him infinitely, and the smouldering passion flamed up in his dark eyes. He strained her to him hungrily, as if her slim body lying against his had awakened the sleeping fires within him. She struggled against the pressure of his arm, averting her head. "Always cold?" he chided. "Kiss me, little piece of ice."