her knees
against the leather curtain.

Well might she crouch, well might she have put dust upon her head as do
the Easterns in their grief and shame; well might her voice have wailed
out across the desert in sorrow for the young life broken by the
careless fingers of her heedless youth.

But she knelt without movement, with her face in her hands, the hands
which had so lightly played pitch-and-toss with a man's heart and a
man's life, and prayed desperately, silently, for forgiveness.

Let it be granted her on account of her years, for youth is ever blind,
and the young are ever selfish, giving never a thought to the years
they must spend, when, grey-haired and wise, they will try to repair
with their shaking old hands, the tatters and rents they had made in
their thoughtless, grasping youth.

Strange it is that the old in years, in sorrow and knowledge, will sit
darning the rents and patching the bad places with their trembling
hands, as their wise old heads nod and their dear old mouths murmur a
prayer, and yet be unable to teach the young how to keep the fabric of
life whole, or safeguard it with the lavender of love and good-will
pressed between its folds.

Until the drumming of the sands had sounded like distant thunder and
the shape of the horse and its rider had become distinct to the
desert-trained eye of her desert lover, Damaris remained apprehensive
and silent in the safe refuge of his arms, which crushed her to his
heart; then he lifted her and carried her swiftly to the little room of
prayer lit by the silver lamp and, wresting a promise from her to keep
her presence hidden, no matter what she might hear through the curtain,
kissed her hands one and twice and yet again and left her, drawing the
curtain close.

Horrified, she heard the voice of Ben Kelham; like a statue of fear she
stood, with her ear close to the curtain, for the half of an hour, the
thirty short minutes in which she came to understand at last, clearly,
definitely, that there was only one man in the world for her, and that
was the Englishman who sat with clenched hands under the lash of his
friend's words; and her hand trembled so that the curtain shook as
though blown by the night-wind as she held it back just wide enough to
look through without being seen; and her eyes were soft with gratitude
when she understood the greatness of the sacrifice the man of the East
had laid on the altar of his honour and his friendship and his love