e looked over his shoulder to
the tents,--"it has been through my carelessness, and we shall be shown
a way in which to try and make amends. Laugh, dear? Let them laugh,
dear heart, when they see how we love each other."

But, for all that, he frowned above her curly head, because he had all
the Englishman's horror of scandal in connection with any of his
women-folk; but he set his teeth and crushed her up closer, then let
her go suddenly and swung her round, pointing across to the west.

"Look, darling; look!"

And the tears streamed down the girl's face as she flung out her arms.

"_Irja Sooltan_!" she called. "_Irja Sooltan_!"

Her voice carried on the still air like the note of a bell over water.

And the stallion, who had broken from his _sayis_ as he was being led
from the stable in readiness for the sad procession to the river, and
who, terrified at the sight of the burning tents, had rushed on in
search of his master, stopped dead, with his head up and tail and mane
streaming in the wind.

He had not found his master, but he knew the voice that called.

"_Irja Sooltan_!" it came again. "_Irja_! _Irja_!"

And he reared and wheeled in the direction from whence it came, then
raced to where he saw the girl standing.

He stamped, and whinnied, and nuzzled her hand and her shoulder as she
stood in her lover's arms.

"Tell me you will marry me, sweetheart," Ben Kelham was saying, with
one hand on the stallion's bridle. "Say it, Damaris."

She shook her head and looked up piteously, with tears in her wonderful
eyes, as she made a great sacrifice to her honour.

"I can't, Ben," she whispered. "I--I--Oh! I can't tell you--I
haven't--the courage--Oh! Ben, you would never understand------"

He gave a great shout as he leapt to the saddle and took the stallion
back a hundred yards, then wheeled him and raced him back along his
tracks.

"Understand, beloved?" he cried, as he bent as he rushed past her at
full speed and lifted her to the saddle. "There is nothing to
understand." And he turned the stallion as he spoke and headed him
towards the tents. "We will just go back, dear; we will just pass to
say goodbye--together."

And they swept across the desert.

Then he reined in the stallion and sat staring, then whispered, as he
bent and kissed the bonny curls:

"The way out, dear; the way out. Someone is waiting for us."

Stubbornly, heavily, across the desert, with occasional pauses for rest