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So she would have sat by Max if he had given back glance for glance; but he pushed his way out quickly when Ahmara's dance was over, and drew in long, deep breaths of desert air, sweet with wild thyme, before he dared let himself even think of Sanda. Sanda, who loved Stanton with this recompense!
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.
It was just possible, for he had stepped close to the tent in barring the dancer away from it. If Sanda had heard hurrying footsteps and voices she might have peeped through the canvas flaps; and having made an aperture, it would have been easy to catch a few words of Ahmara's excited whispers.
They saw no wrong in Ahmara's presence; but she was haughty and high-tempered, and took part against them with Stanton. The whisper ran that the dancing-woman had brought bad luck to the expedition for so long as she was with the caravan; whereas, if fortune were to come, it would come through the white girl who nursed the sick and had a smile or a kind word for the humblest porter.
This whisper reached Ahmara's ears through the wives of the camel-drivers, and at first she was anxious to keep it from Stanton lest it should prejudice him and put into his head the idea of leaving her at one of the far apart oasis towns where the caravan took supplies.
But whether the failure of his mad marriage had disturbed his faith in his own persistent luck, or whether Ahmara's influence made for degeneration, in any case, a blight seemed to have fallen on the once great man's mentality. It had been a boast of his that, though he drank freely when "resting on his laurels" in Europe, he was strong enough to "swear off" at any moment.
She could not bear to speak of her humiliation, and Max would have cut his tongue out rather than let slip a word concerning it after his first vain appeal. As time went on and the caravan advanced on its march across the desert, Stanton ignored the presence of Sanda as she ignored Ahmara's. She ate and slept in her own tent, which had been Max's.
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