spacious than it really was, the whole room had an air of barbaric
splendour. The somber hangings gleaming with thick silver threads
seemed to Diana like a studied theatrical effect, a setting against
which the Arab's own white robes should contrast more vividly; she
remembered the black and silver waistcloth she had seen swathed round
him, with curling scornful lip. There was a strain of vanity in all
natives, she generalised contemptuously. Doubtless it pleased this
native's conceit to carry out the colour scheme of his tent even in his
clothes, and pose among the sable cushions of the luxurious divan to
the admiration of his retainers. She made a little exclamation of
disgust, and turned from the soft seductiveness of the big couch with
disdain.

She crossed the tent to the little bookcase and knelt beside it
curiously. What did a Francophile-Arab read? Novels, probably, that
would harmonise with the atmosphere that she dimly sensed in her
surroundings. But it was not novels that filled the bookcase. They were
books of sport and travel with several volumes on veterinary surgery.
They were all in French, and had all been frequently handled, many of
them had pencilled notes in the margins written in Arabic. One shelf
was filled entirely with the works of one man, a certain Vicomte Raoul
de Saint Hubert. With the exception of one novel, which Diana only
glanced at hastily; they were all books of travel. From the few
scribbled words in the front of each Diana could see that they had all
been sent to the Arab by the author himself--one even was dedicated to
"My friend, Ahmed Ben Hassan, Sheik of the Desert." She put the books
back with a puzzled frown. She wished, with a feeling that she could
not fathom, that they had been rather what she had imagined. The
evidence of education and unlooked-for tastes in the man they belonged
to troubled her. It was an unexpected glimpse into the personality of