"My dear, your exuberance fascinates as well as flattens me," said the august Amut in his fall. "May I ask the cause? Mind you, I do not insist. You well know, I am too proud to fight." "You will learn in time, my dear," laughed Verbeena airily, her thoughts running ragingly in the line of movie contracts, of a day soon when she would excel the gilded harvestings of Queen Mary herself. "Aw--please, O, clashing cadence of my soul's innermost adoration, let your Sheiky know what gives you such happiness divine!" "Nix-nix!" said Verbeena with excessive laughter, "my conquering devil! Have you fed the camels yet? If not, spill that toga and hump yourself!" "Immediately, O, exquisite creature of Allah's greatest favor! And yet, if you'll pardon me, this night I had planned taking a smack at my old enemy, Sheik Abraham O'Mara. He's been cutting into the borders of our sandpile considerable lately. E'er this, Queenie, he has always been scared of me. But now he rides about the wide places, the narrow and the circumambient without fear or dread of Amut Ben Butler. "Once his goat was mine but now he thinks nothing of grabbing my horses and camels any old time." "Go right over and attend to him this evening," said Verbeena. "You have my full permission. If he gets giddy with you just tell him I'll be over myself. I've heard too that he is uncommonly cussed among the women. And him a black Sheik at that--the old Ace of Spades! Tell him----" [Illustration: THE SHEIK ABRAHAM O'MARA, WHO BEAT IT FOR DEAR LIFE ACROSS THE SAHARA AT SIGHT OF VERBEENA.] "Tee-hee-hee!" chuckled the lordly Amut. "What are you laughing at?" demanded his thoroughly acknowledged wife--(in writing, you remember). "Just look over on the horizon, my dear." "At whom?" "Those now to be seen scooting out of sight across it. The distance is great but I recognize the leading figure clearly as the Sheik Abraham O'Mara. See how fat! And how fast he travels! And yet it has always been said of him there was danger ever when that fiend was abroad. But, it seems he saw us first." "Aha, afeard of you, my Amut?" "Of me," he chuckled again and again. For the first time in months the Sheik permitted himself a little bold laughter. "Of me!" Once home in the tent the Sheik Amut Ben Butler dared to put his arms out to her. He was no ordinary man to succumb to the fascinations of a woman. You had to hit him first. But having experienced the metallic obstinacy of Verbeena Mayonnaise, the inflexibility of her character and seeing, as he ecstatically had, the flight of his powerful and avowed enemy, Abraham O'Mara, he was fraught with the realization that love had become a force in his life which might drive him to anything where Verbeena was concerned, predominantly and irresistibly. He'd be trimming her curls for her next. Amut's arms ached for her and always ached worse after he had tried to hold her.