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The one objection was that, if she went at all, she must start at once, because there was at the moment a great chance for her to travel well chaperoned. A captain of the Chasseurs d'Afrique had just been ordered from Sidi-bel-Abbés to Touggourt, and was leaving at once with his wife.
But nothing, not even exciting prospects of a march, can be allowed to spoil the Legion's rest; and so it was that in half an hour the raging avengers had become once more stone figures carved on narrow tombs in a moonlit mausoleum. For the first and only time since he had joined Max thoroughly hated the Legion and wished wildly that he had never come near Sidi-bel-Abbés. Yet did he wish that?
"It wouldn't be a sacrifice." "Do you think you could save yourself from prison?" "Perhaps not, but I shouldn't care." "I'd care. It would break my happiness. Father couldn't tell you, as I do, to join us, but I know enough about his interest in you to be sure that in his heart he would wish it, rather than come back to Sidi-bel-Abbés and find you in the Bat d'Aff.
But having wired again to Edwin Reeves, and hearing that Mrs. Reeves, already in Paris, had started for Algiers, a plan occurred to Max. He advised Josephine, if she thought that de la Tour cared for her, to tell him that she was giving up work in the Hotel Splendide; also that she was leaving Sidi-bel-Abbés forever; and then see what he would say.
"And if you'll let me I'll go with you in the train to Sidi-bel-Abbés." "Oh, no!" she exclaimed. "I couldn't consent to such a sacrifice." "I must go either by your train or another." "Why why?" "I've found out that the woman I came to search for is not only alive, but living at Sidi-bel-Abbés." "It's Fate!" the girl half whispered. "But what Fate? What does it all mean?"
"Yes, it does comfort me," he said. "Though I ought to be sorry that things aren't clear for you. They will be, though, I hope, before long." "And for you," she added. "I wish we could exchange experiences when we've found out what's going to become of us. I wish you were going on to Sidi-bel-Abbés." "I wish I were," Max said, and he did actually wish it.
And their young voices tinkling out in laughter sounded pitifully small in the immensity of the night-bleached desert. Far away in the north where colonist farmers had long ago conquered the desert there was music that evening at Sidi-bel-Abbés, headquarters of the Foreign Legion.
"I am very sorry," said Max, "but Colonel DeLisle has given me only short leave. There was just enough time to get me to Djazerta, from Touggourt, and to do the journey comfortably to Sidi-bel-Abbés. He is a prompt man, as you know. He thinks and acts quickly. It didn't occur to him that there need be any great delay.
One of the seven was the man with whom Sanda DeLisle had chatted on board the General Morel at dinner. He was the hero of the compartment, for he was going to Sidi-bel-Abbés to fight a boxing match with the champion of the Legion, a soldier named Pelle. Dozing and waking, Max heard excited talk of la boxe and the coming event.
Besides, she had met Captain de la Tour in Sidi-bel-Abbés, and she had guessed that it was partly because of him and one or two others like him that her father had sent her to the Agha's rather than leave her at Bel-Abbés alone.
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