"Lie still, you little fool!" he snarled with sudden vehemence, and
with brutal hands he forced her to obey him, until she wondered if he
would leave a single bone unbroken in her body, till further resistance
was impossible. Gasping for breath she yielded to the strength that
overpowered her, and ceased to struggle. The man seemed to know
intuitively that she was beaten, and turned his undivided attention to
his horse with the same low laugh of amusement that had sent the
strange feeling through her when her shots had missed him. It had
puzzled her then, but it grew now with a horrible intensity, until she
knew that it was fear that had come to her for the first time in her
life--a strange fear that she fought against desperately, but which was
gaining on her with a force that was sapping her strength from her and
making her head reel. She did not faint, but her whole body seemed to
grow nerveless with the sudden realisation of the horror of her
position.

After that Diana lost all sense of time, as she had already lost all
sense of direction. She did not know if it was minutes or hours that
passed as they still galloped swiftly through the night. She did not
know if they were alone or if the band of Arabs to which this man
belonged were riding with them, noiseless over the soft ground. What
had happened to her guide and his men? Had they been butchered and left
where they fell, or were they, too, being hurried unwillingly into some
obscure region of the desert? But for the moment the fate of Mustafa
Ali and his companions did not trouble her very much; they had not
played a very valiant part in the short encounter, and her own
situation swamped her mind to the exclusion of everything else.

The sense of fear was growing on her. She scorned and derided it. She
tried to convince herself it did not exist, but it did exist, torturing