Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/175

 As for the Spahi, he rose and left the tent. His work was done; thereafter madame was competent. And, moreover, with instinctive delicacy, this son of the desert did not wish to be present when O'Rourke should come to his right senses. He was not of a strongly intuitive nature, that Spahi; but he could hazard a shrewd guess how matters stood with the heart of Madame la Princesse.

Presently, however, the tears of madame ceased. She began to listen to the words that fluttered between the clenched teeth of O'Rourke. For an hour she harkened—breathless—sometimes with her hand gripping hard above her heart as if to still its tumult in her bosom, at times more calmly, yet always with a great joy shining in her eyes.

Towards dawn there came a lull; the Irishman seemed again deep in stupor. But this was not a dangerous condition; it has become more rest than coma; he was recuperating.

"I dare leave him for a moment," considered Princess Beatrix.

She rose slowly and went to the door of the tent, looking over her shoulder at each step, reluctant to leave him even for a second. And yet—she must know. And the man lay quiescent as a child, breathing evenly as an infant by its mother's side.

She drew aside the flap of the tent, and stepped out.

It was barely the verge of that breathing twilight that precedes the dawn. The oasis was silent and dark; not a sound came to her ears to indicate that a soul moved within its borders. Only in her brother's tent a faint light glimmered, only at the edge of the date grove a dim palpitation of dusk seemed to be trembling, as if hesitant to intrude upon the immense sanctity of the night.