“Oh, you’re mad!” exclaimed Kate, and, clutching hold of Muriel’s arm, she led her into her tent.
Here they argued the matter to and fro; but it was apparent from the first that the thing was irrevocably sealed, and that all the details of the plan had been thought out so as to prevent the adventure becoming public.
“Very possibly there’ll be no scandal at all,” said Muriel; “the natives can be bribed not to tell. I shall come back with you to Cairo when you return there, and who is going to give me away?”
“But what is a fortnight?” asked Kate, in despair. “Good God!—what is a fortnight, when it means even the _possible_ ruin of your whole life?”
“I can’t look so far ahead,” Muriel replied. “I only know I want him now. And I’m going to him, Kate; I’m going to the man I love, the man who loves me!”
She ran out of the tent, calling to her dragoman, Mustafa, who appeared at once from the domestic quarters. He received the news without perturbation.
“Yes, my leddy,” he said. “I varry pleased. My wife’s brother him live at El Hamrân. Thirty mile’—it is nudding: five, six hours riding; and the road him varry good, varry straight.”
She told him to get two camels ready at once, to fill the water-bottles, collect a few eatables, and—to hold his tongue. “I have to take some important papers over to Mr. Lane,” she said, and he smiled at the lie.
Her large dressing-case was already packed; but, returning to her tent, she opened it to put into it her little revolver, which, for the fun of the thing, she had purchased in Cairo. This done, she went back to Kate, who received her in cold silence.
“Oh, Kate,” she cried, “don’t be beastly to me. I’m only going to do the sort of thing that’s been done by most of the girls we know. It’s human nature, Kate. When you love a man and feel you absolutely can’t live without him, you’ve got to surrender to him and do what he wants; and I know now that this is what he’s been asking me to do all along.” She put her arms about her neck, and kissed her.
Kate looked at her sorrowfully, and her face softened. “Muriel, you blinkin’ idiot,” she said, “I don’t know what’ll come of this, but whatever happens, old bean, I’m with you.”
The road, or rather camel-track, from El Homra to El Hamrân passes across a wide plain of comparatively flat sand, which looks like the bed of a vast lake from which the waters have been drained off. It is a huge hollow separated by high ground from the smaller basin in which the former oasis is situated. Ranges of hills form the boundaries of this area, those to the east being high and many-peaked, the others low and undulating; and from one side of the plain to the other must be something like twenty miles. There are three wells between the two oases, the second being practically in the centre of the plain, and marking the half-way point of the journey.