Amut Ben Butler carefully flicked a sandworm off his silver and black girdle.

"Sure, darling," he answered. "I just went out and sent that whole moving picture outfit reeling, Kingpin and all!"

She crept closely to him. Her strong young arms went about him.

"Amut, my love," she pleaded, "will you promise not to run away from me any more?"

"May Allah cross my eyes and crack my teeth, if ever again I think of it, my vibrant Verbie. I wouldn't wanter--ever--the way you act to me now--so nice--so loving--just like a regular girlie."

He kissed her otherwise clubbed curls.

They snuggled close.

Ooooooh, awful close!

Throbs palpitant and pa.s.sionate pa.s.sed from one to the other--strong, vertiginous, terrific, as of an aching tooth.

"Tell me, Amut," she said more softly than she ever knew she could, "who after all the d.i.c.kens are you?"

His blue eyes sparkling like opals in their ardor, looked down upon her with a tenderness too ineffable to matriculate. But he sighed and was silent.

"And--and why do you hate the English?"

"Hate the English? With you in my arms, sweet Verbie? Hate the English! Only I used to, Verbeena mine--used to. But----"

"Who--who are you? Amut, as you love me speak!"

"I----"

"You----"

"Am----"

"Are----"

"I--I can hold the secret back from you no longer, throbbing jewel of my pa.s.sion. I----"

"You----"

"Am----" He doffed his turban and stood erect. He glanced fixedly into her uplifted eyes. "The Crown Prince!"

"Crown Prince! Amut. Crown Prince of--of----"

"Of Chermany!"

"Mine Gott!" gasped Verbeena!

"That partnership has been dissolved, Verbeena lieber. But as soon as Popper schnapps the manacles of Holland off him, a new and splendid project will be put in operation by us ever magnificent and glorious Hohenzollerns. New and great fortunes await us--here on the desert, Verbeenalina! You bet your life on that! What do you think? We intend to establish a chain of Imperial Breweries on the Sahara where everybody is always so thirsty. Isn't that great, Verbie? How's that for high?"

"Great--but I--I am English!"

"Aw--the war's over! Aw--come on, be a good little feller--I mean sweetheart. Stick along."

"But your princess!"

"The Sahara is a wide-spot and there ain't many princesses got the fare to Reno these days, Verbeenagaborden. And, besides, didn't you draw up a fine Saharatic marriage contract? In lots of desert love affairs in the novels they jolly well--how do you like my English so swell spoken to please you?--don't never get so far as a sc.r.a.p of paper between them. Nothing between them--just nothing but----"

Verbeena looked at him demurely.

"True for you, Goldielocks," said she, adding with a courage that was easily tantamount to bravery, "I'd rather be respectable than a best seller any day!

"But--who in the world are these people around you? Spaghetti--who is he?"

"The only ferdombt Italian who stuck when the treaty busted. Popper was going to make him King of Rome or something good like that only for what happened."

"And Hulda?"

"Sh--the Grand d.u.c.h.ess Hautenglautenschlitzenburg! She's hiding!"

"From what?"

"That name."

"But Mr. Hitchings--however did you come to have him for a friend?"

"Verbeenaheimer," laughed the Crown Prince, "that wasn't Mr.

Hitchings. It's Charlie of Austria. He expects to organize a circus troupe and enter Vienna with a large company of desert men, himself disguised as a dancing girl. Then some night they will burst from the tent and Charlie will pull his crown from under his skirts and--there you are! He'll be king again--for a minute.

"But me and popper and the chain of breweries----"

"Ah!"

"Yah!"

She snuggled to him closer and closer and closer and closer and closer than that. Her magnificent long black lashes dusted off his cheek.

She smoothed back the fair hair that had been so strange to her in company with the jet whiskers that once he had worn. She thought of Cyril Gristmille and then she clung to him like a little leech--only, you know, a warm leech.

"My prince--my prince--my Sheik Amut Never Ben King," she sighed gustfully.

Entranced he grasped her to him fiercely his lips against her lips!

Their eyes were blazing, their veins throbbing, their bodies writhing as he whispered tensely, tickling her under the chin:

"Tweetsy, tweetsy, Verbeena mine!"

Beyond the tent flap they saw the silver shaft of the magic moon and caught glimpses of the stately palms where the dates cl.u.s.tered into the years and to their ears came the sweet, silvery, insistent, impa.s.sioned twillipping of the sandworms, the neighing of the beloved horses, the music of the mules and the vibrant sweet cough of the camels.

In delicious hectic harmony their pulses beat mutually at 110.