"WHERE THE STRANGE ROADS GO DOWN"

Shadows of evening flowed over the desert like blue water out of whose depths rose the golden crowns of the dunes. The caravan had still some miles of sand billows between them and Touggourt, when suddenly a faint thrill of sound, which might have been the waking dream of a tired brain, or a trick of wind, a sound scarcely louder than heart-throbs, grew definite and distinct: the distant beating of African drums, the shriek of rÄitas, and the sighing of ghesbahs. The Arabs on their camels came crowding round Max, who led the caravan, riding beside Sanda's mehari.

"Sidi," said their leader, "this music is not of earth, for Touggourt is too distant for us to hear aught from there. It is the devil. It comes from under the dunes. Such music we have heard in the haunted desert where the great caravan was buried beneath the sands, but here it is the first time, and it is a warning of evil. Something terrible is about to happen. What shall we do—stop here and pray, though the sunset prayer is past, or go on?"

"Go on, of course," ordered Max. "As for the music, it must be that the wind brings it from Touggourt."

"It is not possible, Sidi," the camel-man, husband of Khadra, persisted. "Besides, there is no great feastday at this time, not even a wedding or a circumcision, or we should have heard before we started away that it was to be. Such playing, if from the hands of man, would mean some great event."

Even as he spoke the music grew louder and wilder. Max hurried the caravan on as fast as it could go among the sand billows, fearing that the Arabs' superstition might cause a stampede. With every stride of the camels' long, four-jointed legs, the music swelled; and at the crest of a higher dune than any they had climbed, Sanda, leaning out of her bassourah, gave a cry.

"A caravan—oh! but a huge caravan like an army," she exclaimed, "or like a troop of ghosts. What if—what if it should be Sir Knight just starting away?"

"I think it is he," Max answered heavily. "I think it must be Stanton getting off."

"We shall meet him. I can wish him good-bye and Godspeed! Soldier" (this was the name she had given Max), "it does seem as if heaven must have timed our coming and his going for this moment."

"Or the devil," Max amended bitterly in his heart. But aloud he said nothing. He knew that if he had spoken Sanda would not have heard him then.

"Let's hurry on," she begged, "and meet him—and surprise him. He can't be angry. He must be glad for father's sake, if not for mine. Oh! come, Soldier, come, or I will go alone!"

The man whose duty it was to guide her camel had dropped behind, as had often happened before at her wish and Max's order, for the mehari was a well-trained and gentle beast, knowing by instinct the right thing to do. Now Sanda leaned far out and touched him on the neck. Squatting in the way of camels brought up among dunes, he slid down the side of a big golden billow, sending up a spray of sand as he descended. Below lay a valley, where the blue dusk poured in its tide; and marching through the azure flood a train of dark forms advanced rhythmically, as if moving to the music which they had outstripped. It was a long procession of men and camels bearing heavy loads, so long that the end of it had not yet come into sight behind the next sand billow; but at its head a man rode on a horse, alone, with no one at his side. Already it was too dark to see his face, but Max knew who it was. He felt the man's identity with an instinct as unerring as Sanda's.

Also he longed to hasten after her and catch up with the running camel, as he could easily do, for his horse, though more delicate and not as enduring, could go faster. But, though Sanda had cried "Come!" he held back. She had hardly known what she said. She did not want him to be with her when she met Stanton; and if he—Max—wished to be there, it was a morbid wish. Whether Stanton were kind or unkind to the girl, he, the outsider, would suffer more than he need let himself suffer, since he was not needed and would only be in the way. Riding slowly and keeping back the men of his own little caravan, who wished to dash forward now their superstitious fears were put to flight, Max saw Stanton rein up his horse as the mehari, bearing a woman's bassourah, loped toward him; saw him stop in surprise, and then, no doubt recognizing the face framed by the curtains, jump off his horse and stride forward through the silky mesh of sand holding out his arms. The next instant he had the girl in them, was lifting her down without waiting for the camel to kneel, for she had sprung to him as if from the crest of a breaking wave; and Max bit back an oath as he had to see Ahmara's lover crush Sanda DeLisle against his breast.

It was only for an instant, perhaps, but for Max it was a red-hot eternity. He forgot his resolution to efface himself, and whipped his horse forward. By the time he had reached the two figures in the sand, however, the big, square-shouldered man in khaki and the slim girl in white had a little space between them. Stanton had released Sanda from his arms and set her on her feet; but he held both the little white hands in his brown ones; and now that Max was near he could see a look on the square sunburnt face which might have won any woman, even if she had not been his in heart already. Max himself was thrilled by it. He realized as he had realized in Algiers, but a thousand times more keenly, the vital, compelling magnetism of the man.

No need for Sanda to wonder whether "Sir Knight" would be glad to see her! He was glad, brutally glad it seemed to Max, as the lion might be glad after long, lonely ways to chance upon his young and willing mate.

"Curse him! How dare he look at her like that, after Ahmara!" thought Max. His blood sang in his ears like the wicked voice of the rÄita following the caravan. All that was in him of primitive man yearned to dash between the two and snatch Sanda from Stanton. But the soldier in him, which discipline and modern conventions had made, held him back. Sanda was Mademoiselle DeLisle, the daughter of his colonel. He who had been Max Doran was now nobody save Maxime St. George, a little corporal in the Foreign Legion, with hardly enough money left to buy cigarettes. Ahmara had been an episode. Now the episode was over, and in all probability Sanda, like most women, would have forgiven it if she knew. She was happy in Stanton's overmastering look. She did not feel it an insult, or dream that the devouring flame in the blue eyes was only a spurt of new fire in the ashes of a burnt-out passion.

She must be mistaking it for love, and her heart must be shaken to ecstasy by the surprise and joy of the miracle. Max knew that if he rudely rode up to them in this, Sanda's great moment, nothing he could say or do would really part them, even if he were cad enough to speak of Ahmara, the dancer. Sanda would not believe, or else she would not care; and always, for the rest of her life, she would hate him. He pulled up his horse as he thought, and sat as though he were in chains. He was, according to his reckoning, out of earshot, but Stanton's deep baritone had the carrying power of a 'cello. Max heard it say in a tone to reach a woman's heart: "Child! You come to me like a white dove. God bless you! I needed you. I don't know whether I can let you go."

Slowly Max turned his horse's head, and still more slowly rode back to the caravan which he had halted fifty feet away. For an instant he hoped against hope that Sanda would hear the sound of his going, that she would look after him and call. But deep down in himself he knew that no girl in her place, feeling as she felt, would have heard a cannon-shot. He explained to the astonished men that this was the great explorer, the Sidi who found new countries where no other white men had ever been, and the young Roumia lady had known him ever since she was a child. The Sidi was starting out on a dangerous expedition, and it was well that chance had brought them together, for now the daughter of the explorer's oldest friend could bid him good-bye. They must wait until the farewell had been given, then they would go on again.

The camel-men assented politely, without comment. But Max heard Khadra say to her husband, "It is the Sidi who loved Ahmara. One would think he had forgotten her now. Or is it that he tries this way to forget?"

Max wished angrily that his ears were less quick, and that he had not such a useless facility for picking up words out of every patois.

Half an hour passed, and the blue shadows deepened to purple. It was night, and Touggourt miles away. Still the two were talking, and the darkness had closed around them like the curtains of a tent. They had halted not only the little caravan returning from the south, but the great caravan starting for the far southeast. Nothing was of importance to Stanton and Sanda except each other and themselves. Max hated Stanton, yet was fascinated by the thought of him: virile, magnetic, compelling; a man among men; greater than his fellows, as the great stars above, flaming into life, were brighter than their dim brothers.

The music, which still throbbed and screamed its notes of passion in the desert, seemed to be beating in Max's brain. A horrible irritation possessed him like a devil. He could have yelled as a man might yell in the extremity of physical torture. If only that music would stop!

When he had almost reached the limit of endurance there came a soft padding of feet in the sand and a murmur of voices. Then he saw Stanton walking toward him with the girl. Sanda called to him timidly, yet with a quiver of excitement in her voice:

"Monsieur St. George, mon ami!"

Not "Soldier" now! That phase was over. Max got off his horse and walked to meet the pair.

"You know each other," Sanda said. "I introduced you last March in Algiers. And perhaps you met again here in Touggourt with my father, not many days ago. I've told Mr. Stanton all about you now, mon ami; he knows how good you have been. He knows how I—confided things to you I never told to anybody else. Do you remember, Monsieur St. George, my saying how, when I was small, I used to long to run away dressed like a boy, and go on a desert journey with Richard Stanton? Well, my wish has come true! Not about the boy's clothes, but—I am going with him! He has asked me to be his wife, and I have said 'yes.'"