Margaret had lived in the valley for a little over three weeks, immortal weeks of intense interest and new impressions. She had fitted herself into the atmosphere with a charm and adaptability which left Michael and Freddy wondering how they had ever got on without her. A woman in the hut made all the difference; a feeling of "homeness" now pervaded the camp. Margaret had found so much to do in the way of adding obvious touches of comfort and convenience to the hut and to the tents that she had found little or no time to start upon her studies of Egyptology.
The moonlight nights she had spent either in the company of her brother or Michael, wandering about the valley, or sitting alone outside their primitive home, absorbing the spirit of the desert. She had not felt ready for book-learning.
One evening, after dinner, Michael and she had ridden down the valley and back again, repeating her first journey, so that she might enjoy it by moonlight.
The three weeks had done a great deal to help her to distinguish some of the periods and terms in connection with her brother's work. The word Coptic, for instance, had now its proper significance in her mind, and the terms dynasty and century were no longer jumbled hopelessly together. She also realized that Egypt had been governed by kings and queens with strong individualities of their own; they were not all spoken of by Egyptologists as "Pharaohs," a word which hitherto had suggested to Margaret the title given to the hosts of nameless and half legendary monarchs who ruled over a semi-Biblical kingdom.
Thus far and no further had she gone in the story of the world's first civilization; but she had gone further in her friendship with Michael Amory and in her knowledge of things Mohammedan. He had helped her to unravel the skein of difficulties which Egypt's three distinct and widely-different civilizations had presented to her—the period of ancient Egypt, the period which we now call Coptic or Early Christian and the period of the Arab invasion, with its importation of a Mohammedan civilization. Traces of all these distinct civilizations and religions perpetually come to light in the work of excavation. Nothing puzzled the girl more than the fact that while digging on an ancient Egyptian site, her brother seemed to find Christian and Mohammedan relics. But even when he was speaking of interesting events in comparatively modern Egyptian history, which he took for granted she would appreciate and understand, Margaret felt disgracefully ignorant.
So Michael took her in hand and he thoroughly enjoyed the work of helping her to grasp some of the essential points which would clear her mind before she started upon her serious reading. She had begun taking lessons in Arabic with Michael who could speak it fluently but could neither read nor write it, the written and spoken language being entirely different.
Margaret's quickness astonished him. He was ignorant of her record at college.
He was now having an example of her capacity for learning which she did at a pace which rather unnerved him. Margaret learnt a language as she learned the geography of a city. She would quietly and composedly study a map until the "sense" of the city was in her brain. In beginning her study of Arabic she explained to her brother that she must first of all try to grasp the "sense" of the language.
"I want a map of it, Freddy—you know what I mean."
And Freddy did know. The Lampton type of brain was familiar to him, and his own method of absorbing languages, or any of the subjects which he had had to study for his examinations, was exactly similar to Margaret's, so he set Michael and their Arabic master on the right track.
As a rule, the Arabic alphabet takes a student about three weeks to learn. Margaret, with apparently very little trouble, mastered it in one; it took Michael almost a month. Yet Margaret knew that she was not grasping things with any ease or quickness; she felt too unsettled and impatient. She was "dying," as she expressed it, to push on with Arabic so as to be able to talk to the natives and understand things Mohammedan, but the very fact that Arabic was not going to help her to read Egyptian hieroglyphics, or understand anything at all about ancient Egypt, acted as an irritant to her brain, and retarded her working powers.
"And when my brain is annoyed, or it feels impatient," she said, "bang goes my poor intelligence—it simply won't be hurried; it will only work in its own deliberate way."
Michael declared that the way it was working was good enough for him—rather too good, in fact.
Under such circumstances, the intimacy between Margaret and her brother's best friend naturally ripened very quickly. Margaret felt as though she had known him for months instead of weeks, and more than once she had wondered what life would be like without him. He was much more imaginative than Freddy and more intellectually excitable and curious. He theorized and perhaps romanced where Freddy was apt to accept only proven facts. Michael's temperament was the exact stimulant which Margaret's brain required.
That Michael did his share of hard work Margaret had realized when she accompanied him one day to the scene of his labours. She had had to bend almost double and crawl down a steep shaft, of slippery, sliding debris, to what she thought must be halfway through the world, and pick her way over the rubbish in a semi-excavated chamber in the vast tomb. Some of the chambers were full of huge stones, which had fallen in with the roof. It was in a smaller chamber, where the heat was so great that she could scarcely breathe, that Michael spent his mornings and the greater part of his afternoons.
The heat of Egypt, concentrated for centuries and centuries, seemed to scorch Margaret's face when she entered it. The building was like a temple with side chapels. In one side chapel Michael sat himself down to copy a wide band of gaily-painted decorations, which formed a dado round its three walls.
* * * * * *
On this particular night Margaret had returned from a long walk with Michael. They had left the low level of the valley and its winding white road and had climbed up on to the heights of the Sahara. It had pleased Margaret to feel that her feet were pressing the sands of the great African desert. She had never dreamed that their valley was actually a rift in the rocks of the Sahara, that ocean of sand which travels on and on to infinity.
They had stood side by side on its high ridge, with their eyes looking towards the plain below, the historic plain which once held the capital of the world. The plain of Thebes reached to the river, and across the river lay gay Luxor, with its lights and the luxuries of modern civilization.
Their walk was finished. It had drawn them still closer together. The solitude of the Sahara, with its sense of Divinity, had established a new link in their sympathies; it had created a feeling between them similar to that which is the outcome of two people having been together through strenuous and trying circumstances. They had, as usual, spoken very little; yet they were conscious of having enjoyed each other's society intensely and in the best possible manner, the enjoyment of complete understanding.
Earlier in the evening, when Michael asked her to go for a walk, because Freddy was absorbed in some business letters, he had made the proposal in his habitual way.
"May I come and keep silence with you to-night in the great Sahara?"
And Meg had said, "Yes, do. You know, we really talk to each other all the time—my mind has so much more the gift of speech than my tongue."
And so their silence had been as golden as the sand at their feet, which under Egypt's moon never pales.
Freddy was only too glad that Michael had "cottoned on to Meg," as he expressed it—in fact, he was extremely pleased, for Meg would drive "the other woman" out of his thoughts, and if anything should come of it—well, Mike was one of the very best; Meg could not have a better husband.
But so far no such thought had entered Mike's head, nor yet Margaret's. She was too interested and busy in her new life to think of love; she was only conscious of living as she had never lived before, and as she would have asked to live if she had possessed a wishing-ring. Every hour and minute of her days were a delight. To be with her best "pal" Freddy in Egypt seemed too good to be true, and added to that, there was this unexpected pleasure, the friendship and companionship of the nicest man she had ever met. His rather "drifting" temperament and nature appealed to her as it appealed to Freddy, for the very reason, perhaps, that keenly sensitive as she was and susceptible to her surroundings, her nature and brains were of a practical order. She was not imaginative or moody.
She loved to listen to Michael's vivid, unpractical, Utopian theories and to follow him to where his flashes of brilliance carried him. His dream cities and dream people delighted Margaret. He told her stories as she had never been told stories before, invented as he went along, stories which kept her one minute fighting against tears and the next in delicious laughter.
Margaret never could tell stories, not even to little children; she was not gifted with a creative brain or ingenuity.
On the heights of the Sahara they, had not broken the silence; it was only on their return journey, under a canopy of southern stars, that Margaret had said:
"A short story, please."
And Michael had told her a story about a certain king of Egypt who had a beautiful slave, who had such power over him that she could make him do anything she liked. The things she liked were more fantastic than anything Margaret had ever read inThe Arabian Nights.
Now, on her lounge-chair in front of the hut, Margaret was resting after their walk. Freddy and Michael were both indoors.
Half an hour or perhaps more might have passed, when suddenly a luminous figure stood in front of her. She had not seen its approach; it was simply there before her, just as if it had taken form out of the desert air.
She recognized that it was the figure of an Egyptian Pharaoh or a high priest—she could not tell which. It wore the short kilt-like garment and the high head-dress, with a serpent's head sticking out from the front of it (the double crown of North and South Egypt, though Margaret did not know it at the time) which had become familiar to her in the pictures of ancient Egyptian kings. She had seen many such figures in her brother's books and in the mural paintings of the tombs.
As Margaret looked with amazement—certainly not fear—at the face of the strange apparition in front of her, she thought that it was the saddest she had ever seen. In the eyes there was a world of suffering and sorrow.
She felt conscious of being awake; the moon and the stars were above her; they surrounded the luminous figure. Her brain struggled for intelligence. Was this the spirit of some great king of Egypt, or of a high priest, or what was it? Was it an optical delusion? If it was a spirit, why had it come to her?
"Tell me who you are," she said. "Do you want anything?" She spoke nervously, not expecting an answer.
"I once ruled over Egypt, and I return to see what my people are doing, if the seed I sowed has borne fruit."
"In this, valley there are no people—it is a valley of the dead."
"My body was brought to my mother's tomb in this valley."
The voice was so sad that Margaret said:
"You are in trouble? You cannot rest? Is that why your spirit has returned to earth?"
"My spirit is with Aton, the master of that which is ordained. I have come to deliver a message; it is for you."
"For me?" Margaret said. "I know nothing at all about Egypt."
"That is not necessary. Aton's love is great and large. It filled the two lands of Egypt; it fills the world to-day."
"But I am ignorant. You think I understand—I don't. . . . I can do nothing."
The sad eyes in the emaciated face, the face of a saint and fanatic, smiled at her fears so tenderly that Margaret's heart was less troubled.
"You can tell the one who is to do my work, the one who knows and loves Aton, Aton—the compassionate, the all-Merciful. Tell him that I bid him take up my work."
"Your work?" Margaret said. "You were a king of ancient Egypt. . . . You speak as if you had worshipped our God . . . there is no one who can do your work . . ." She paused, and then said nervously, "Egypt is different now—it cannot go back."
"Egypt must go on, not back. Nothing is different in the heart of man; your soul is as my soul. Aton liveth for ever in his children. He filleth the two lands of Egypt with his love. I was his messenger."
"But who was Aton?" Margaret said. In her mind she was striving to recall if she had ever heard any references to the worship of one god in Egypt, except by the children of Israel.
"The one who is to do my work will tell you. He has studied my teachings, he understands the love of Aton, whose rays encompass the world."
"Thank you," Margaret said. "I will tell him." She knew instinctively that it was Michael who "understood."
"He knows my work and my desire for the people of Egypt. He knows that my people worship one God, but that they have no love of God in their hearts."
As the figure moved, it became less distinct. Margaret said: "Is that all I am to tell him? Are you going away?" She felt distressed; she knew not why.
"I will return. Give him my message."
"That he is to continue your work in Egypt?"
"That he is to teach my people the love and the goodness of Aton, that his mercy is everlasting."
"Tell me, before you go, who is Aton?"
"You ask, as people asked of a Messenger of God who followed after me in my distant kingdom of Syria. Did He not answer them: 'Who are those that draw us to the Kingdom of Heaven? The fowls of the air, and all the beasts that are under the earth and upon the earth, and the fishes in the sea, these are they which draw you, and the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.'"
"And will he understand if I tell him your words? I am quite ignorant of your teachings."
"He will understand because he has studied my teachings. He knows how fair of form was the formless Aton, how radiant of colour. He knows that the Kingdom which is Heaven is within us. In loving the world and the beauty of the world which is Aton's he knows my commandments."
As Margaret was about to ask why he had not appeared to Michael himself, for she had no doubt that it was upon him that the mission was laid, the vision disappeared and she was left alone, under the clear skies, gazing out over the valley which lay spread before her, in its eternal stillness. She could hear the sound of her last words vibrating in the air. There was not a sign of any living thing near her; only in the distance she could hear the barking of the jackals, a desert sound to which she had already grown so accustomed as to scarcely notice it.
That she had been wide awake she was convinced; she did not feel as though she had been asleep. As she tried to visualize the vanished figure and to repeat to herself the words, which she must either have imagined or heard, Michael came out and offered her a cigarette.
"Who were you talking to?" he said. "Freddy and I thought we heard your voice."
"Michael," she said eagerly, "what time is it? Have I been asleep?Have I been here long?"
She spoke anxiously, impatiently.
"How can I tell if you have been asleep?" he said, laughingly. "As to the time, it's about eleven o'clock. Do you often talk in your sleep?"
"Sit down beside me," she said urgently, "and let me tell you what has happened. If I have been asleep, I have dreamed it; if I was awake, I have experienced a very extraordinary thing, the moat extraordinary thing you can imagine!"
Michael threw himself down on the ground at her feet.
"While I was sitting here, and, as I thought, wide awake, thinking over our walk in the Sahara and about your story and enjoying the moon and the stars, quite suddenly a figure appeared. I was awfully startled, and yet not frightened."
"What sort of a figure? One of the house-boys pretending to be a spook?"
"No, no house-boy. If I tell you, don't laugh, for even if it was only a dream—which, of course, it must have been—it was very beautiful and solemn."
Now that Margaret was talking to someone about it, the incredibility of the incident seemed much stronger. "It was probably a dream," she said humbly. "All the same, don't make fun of it."
"I won't laugh," he said. "You know I never laugh at such things. I believe in visions—if you like to call these visitations visions."
"But the odd thing is that the figure was exactly like the picture of an Egyptian Pharaoh—that's why it now seems absurd—only his face was not like the proud, arrogant faces of the Egyptian kings one sees in pictures—fighting kings. It was more like the face of a suffering Christ, the saddest face I ever saw, or ever will see again. Oh, those eyes!" Margaret shivered, and paused.
"Please go on," Michael said. His voice encouraged her.
"I can't remember exactly what he said . . . it's all slipping away. He spoke of some character of which I never heard; he said beautiful things—I wish I could recollect the exact words he used."
"Then he spoke to you?" Michael's voice was low, intense.
"Yes, he spoke. He gave me a message for you."
"For me?" Michael said passionately. "For me? How do you know it was for me?"
Margaret trembled as she spoke. "How do I know it was for you?" She paused. "I do know—or, at least, I never doubted while the figure was here. Now it seems foolish—it must all have been a dream."
"No, go on. I want to hear everything."
"He said I was to tell you that you were to carry on his work in the world, he said that you would understand." She paused. "If it was you, you will understand, because he said you had read his teachings and believed in them. Does that convey anything?"
"Yes, yes. Go on—what else?" Michael's voice trembled with impatience.
"There was one word he used which I have forgotten . . . and it meant everything. I wish I could remember it! It's a name I never heard before."
"Think," Michael said, "do try to think—it may come to you." Margaret noticed that he was trying to hide his excitement; he was more nervous than she was.
"He spoke of someone as God, and said beautiful things about Him . . . this God, of everlasting mercy . . . those were his words. . . . Oh, I remember the name!" she cried. "It was Aton—it seemed to be the name of his God. He spoke of Aton as St. Francis spoke of Christ. Aton was in the birds and fishes and flowers and in the cool streams."
Michael turned round and grasped Margaret's hand. He was trembling with excitement; he could hide it no longer.
"It was Akhnaton! Oh, Meg, how wonderful! Tell me everything . . . the spirit of Akhnaton!"
"But who was Akhnaton? I am in the dark. He said he was Aton's messenger."
"First tell me all you can remember."
Margaret tried to recall everything that the Pharaoh had said to her. His exact words she could not repeat, but their essence she contrived to convey quite clearly to the listening Michael.
"Akhnaton," he kept murmuring. "It must be Akhnaton . . . a message to me through you!"
One sentence she was able to repeat almost word for word. "Who are those that draw us to the Kingdom of Heaven? The fowls of the air and all the beasts that are under the earth and upon the earth, and fishes in the sea, these are they which draw you, and the Kingdom of Heaven is within you."
Michael had unconsciously drawn closer to her as she spoke. She heard him say, with a sigh of intense satisfaction, "His very teachings, Christ's own words!"
"Tell me as exactly as you can what he was like."
Margaret closed her eyes to bring back a picture of the vision, the wonderful figure, luminous and bright.
"His sadness is what I remember most plainly. I had thought that all the Pharaohs were proud, hard warrior kings, with no pity in their hearts. This king's face spoke of the suffering of Christ, of a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. His sorrow seemed to be for humanity, for our sins, not the sorrow of a man who had known only personal unhappiness."
Michael said nothing; he was too deeply moved.
"As I told you," Margaret continued, "he had a very strangely-shaped head, more curiously-shaped than I can describe—very long and sloping upwards to the back. He wore a high head-dress which seemed too heavy for his slender neck. Coming from behind it there were bright rays, just like rays of the sun—I have never seen anything like them in any picture . . . oh, it must have been a dream! It all sounds quite absurd." Margaret's trembling voice belied her words.
"Akhnaton!" Michael cried excitedly. "Now there can be no doubt. Oh, Meg!" He had unconsciously been using Freddy's pet-name for her, his hand sought hers sympathetically.
Margaret prized the word "Meg" as it came affectionately from his lips.
"Meg, it is all too wonderful!"
Michael said no more; he had buried his face in his two hands. He would have given his youth to have seen what Margaret had seen.
"Then you don't think it was a dream?"
"How could you have dreamed the very appearance of Akhnaton, or dreamed his personality, when you have never heard of him?"
"I suppose I couldn't," she said. "But was Akhnaton unlike any otherPharaoh of Egypt?"
"As unlike as St. Francis was to Nero."
A sudden idea came to Margaret. "But," she said, "he spoke to me in English, in my own language. If it was really the spirit of Akhnaton, how could he?"
"Dear Meg, there are more things in divine philosophy than are dreamed of by you or me. In what language did Our Saviour speak to St. Francis, who was an Italian, and to St. Catherine?"
"That is true," Margaret said, in a changed tone. "Will you tell me all about this Pharaoh?"
Michael thought before answering her question, and then he said, "I'd rather not, not yet."
"But why?"
"Because I don't want to put any ideas into your head. All this has come perfectly naturally, and through a modern who was totally ignorant of the message she was conveying. If you were to receive another message, if you ever were to see Akhnaton again, and you knew all about him, it would not be the same thing."
"Oh," Margaret said quickly, "I forgot—he said as he disappeared, 'I will return.'" She gave a deep-drawn sigh and said nervously, "Do you think he will?"
"Will you be afraid? Were you afraid?" Michael's arm had slipped almost round her shoulders. It was a moment when close human contact came very graciously to the girl.
"Afraid? No, he was too gentle, too sad—there was absolutely nothing to be afraid of. I didn't stop to think of the supernaturalness of the vision—I was much too interested. If it was a ghost, I shall never be afraid of ghosts again."
Michael shivered.
Meg looked at him. She had hurt him; she felt a slight shrinking in his sympathy.
"Don't speak of ghosts, Meg—I hate the term, with all its cheapness and irreverence!"
"Then you believe in visions? You are convinced that I have not dreamed all this?"
"If it had been Freddy who had told me, I should have said that he had been asleep and dreamed it, because he knows all about Akhnaton. We are constantly discussing his character, a character I admire much more than he does. But as it was you who saw him and you who have described him as accurately as if you had his portrait in front of you, I feel certain it was not a dream."
Meg remained silent, while her thoughts worked with a new and amazing rapidity. In Egypt she felt that anything was possible; the supernatural might very soon become natural. And certainly the face which she had seen was so unlike the types of the conventional figures of the Egyptian kings she would have visualized if she had tried her best to picture one from imagination, that she began to wonder if Michael was right in his assumption that she had actually seen and been in communication with the spirit of Akhnaton.
"But why should he have chosen me, this great Pharaoh?" she said."Modern me, with no knowledge whatsoever of his kingdom or his beliefs!"
"Ah, why?" Michael said. "Have we ever been told why Mary was chosen to be the Mother of Jesus, the Divine Man Who taught the world what Akhnaton tried to teach his people thirteen hundred years before His coming—that the Kingdom of God is within us? Who can tell the manner or the means by which God works? Not half, or a quarter, of the Christian world knows, Meg, how often God speaks to them through mysterious channels—through spirits, if you like. When people are inspired to do good works, to lead what the material world calls holy lives, God has spoken to them, the God Who is within them, the God Who brought you and me together, Meg, to enjoy this valley. Its emptiness and stillness is full of God. Don't you feel that its beauty and solitude are due to His presence?"
Meg shivered. "I know what you mean."
"Don't be nervous. It is a great privilege, this sense of the divine, this beautiful closeness to God, this cutting off of our material selves, this knowledge of our Kingdom of Heaven within us."
"I am far more earth-tied than you, Mike. I do feel these things, but more feebly, less convincingly. I have never thought much about them. We Lamptons are very practical; all our men have led good, clean, straightforward lives, and our women have not made bad wives and mothers, but I don't think we have been idealists, or very religious. Our sense of honour more than our beliefs has kept us straight."
"Poor, poor Akhnaton!" Michael said. His thoughts had strayed whileMargaret spoke.
"Why do you say 'Poor Akhnaton?' Why was he so sad?"
Michael evaded the question by saying, "We won't speak of this to anyone, if you don't mind. Let it be just between you and me."
Margaret hesitated for a moment. There was something stirring and pleasurable to her emotions in the idea of having a secret with Michael; it was like possessing a part of him all to herself; yet she shrank from keeping back anything from Freddy. Even this dream—if it was only a dream—she would naturally have told to him, because it held such a wonderful idea; it would have interested him. It was interesting from the scientific point of view, the fact that she should have been able to project her unconscious brain into the history which she was going to study and accurately visualize and create for herself the personality and teachings of a Pharaoh of whom she had never heard. If it had been the great Rameses, or any Biblical character who in later years entered into Egyptian history, it would have meant less, for already the personality of the great builder-king of Egypt was known to her, by the frequency with which she had heard the expression "Rameses the Great." But of the heretic Pharaoh she had never heard.
"Do you mind not mentioning it even to your brother?" Mike said. "If he was not in sympathy with my belief that it was not a dream, he might unconsciously affect you—he would probably tell you much that I would rather you didn't know until we find out more."
Margaret gave her promise willingly. Michael's reason seemed to her such a justifiable one that their secret might be kept even from Freddy.
Presently Freddy shouted out, "I'm off to bed, Meg—kick Mike out and go to yours—you've had a long day."
As Mike said good-night, Margaret noticed how strained and grave he was. "Don't look so serious!" She tried to speak lightly. "To-morrow we shall both say that it was all a dream. Fancy an Egyptian Pharaoh rising out of his tomb below the hills to speak to me! I'm not going to think of it any more—I'll send myself to sleep by trying to say the Arabic alphabet backwards."
Michael did not look any the less grave. "He was brought to the valley," he said, "to his mother's tomb, and I don't suppose that I am the first person to receive a message from him—perhaps the first European, but then, I love his teachings. They have not been known very long."
"He said he had come to see what his people were doing. Do you really think he has given this message to others?"
"Why not?—in another manner. These holy men in Egypt who feel compelled to give up their lives to preaching and praying, and who travel from desert-town to desert-town, calling on the people to worship the one and only God—who knows what the manner of their call was, or how God came to them?"
"Then you think that God came to-night, in this valley, in the form ofAkhnaton, to you through me?"
"I certainly do. Akhnaton, like Christ, became divine. We could all be divine if we allowed ourselves to be."
"Good-night," Meg said, for Freddy was shouting again. "It's late, and I'm afraid I am too matter-of-fact and far too materialistic to follow your ideas and beliefs."
"I wish I followed what I believe," Mike said. "On a night like this you can't help believing that God is in the yellow sand and in the blue sky and in the beautiful stillness. He is in you and me and around us. The hills look very holy, don't they? But to-morrow it will be so easy to forget, to take everything for granted, or to behave as if chance had produced God's world." He held her hand for one moment longer than was necessary. "One is so closely in touch with the beauty of God here, Meg. In busy Luxor or Cairo, or in any city, material things are the things that matter. God is forgotten, set aside . . . man's ingenuity is so much more obvious."
"I know," Meg said. "Do you wonder at hermits and saints?" She smiled a beautiful "Good-night."
When she was alone in her room, she opened Maspero'sDawn of Civilization, which Freddy had placed there for her. She turned over its pages idly. "I wonder if I should find anything about Akhnaton here," she said, "or if this is too early history?"
Suddenly she closed the book. "No, I won't—I will keep my promise. I won't read anything about him."
She paused and thought for a few moments: her brain was too active for sleep, her nerves too much on edge, so instead of reading about Akhnaton, who is known in history as Amenhotep IV., the heretic Pharaoh, she knelt down and prayed to his God, beginning with the old familiar words, "Our Father, which art in heaven," for He is the same God yesterday, to-day and for ever, the God of whom Akhnaton said, "He makes the young sheep to dance upon their hind legs, and the birds to flutter in the marshes," and as a modern writer said of Him, "The God of the simple pleasures of life, Whose symbol was the sun's disc, just as it was the symbol of Christianity. There dropped not a sigh from the lips of a babe that the intangible Aton did not hear; no lamb bleated for its mother but the remote Aton hastened to soothe it. He was the living father and mother of all that He had made. He was the Lord of Love. He was the tender nurse who creates the man-child in woman, and soothes him that he may not weep." [1]
This was the God Margaret prayed to, not knowing that it was Aton, the God whom Akhnaton first taught the world to praise, the God for whom Akhnaton thought his kingdom well lost. He was Margaret's God, as He is our God, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, the God Who revealed Himself to His chosen people in the form of Jesus Christ.
One thousand three hundred years elapsed between the mission of Akhnaton and the mission of Jesus Christ. Still another one thousand and nine hundred years were to elapse before the world was to know that there was a king in Egypt, the land of the crocodile-god and the cat-god, Egypt, a very Pantheon of animal-headed gods, to whom God revealed Himself as he revealed Himself to Christ, a God of Love, a God of Tenderness and of Mercy—"The master of that which is ordained."
[1] Weigall'sAkhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt.
The next day Freddy announced at breakfast, which was a typicallyEnglish meal—except for the excellence of the coffee—that there wasto be a very extra-special ball the next night at the Cataract Hotel atAssuan.
"Would you like to go to it, Meg?" he asked. "I think you'd enjoy it—I can guarantee you plenty of partners."
"Would you go to it if I wasn't here?" Meg asked tentatively. The old Meg in her thrilled at the idea of dancing on a good floor with good partners. Freddy had told her of Michael's record as a dancer, so she knew that she could count on two partners, at least, for Freddy and she had learnt dancing together, and had enjoyed nothing better than waltzing with each other.
"Yes, I thought of going," Freddy said. "I can leave everything all right here, and it's about time we had a day off." He turned to Michael. "Carruthers is coming to see me. He wants to stay the night, so that's all right." Carruthers was a fellow-excavator attached to a camp at Memphis.
"Then I'd love to go," Meg said. "I haven't danced for ages, but I left my 'gay rags' at Luxor."
"I'll send Abdul for them," Freddy said, "and you can go to Assuan early to-morrow and get your traps in order. I don't want a fright, mind—the tourists dress like anything."
Meg laughed. "I'll do my best, but don't expect too much of travelled garments."
While she was speaking quite naturally and with genuine interest about the ball, a vision was forming itself before her eyes, her visitor of the night before; the dark sad eyes and the emaciated face of the heretic Pharaoh became extraordinarily clear. It usurped her mind so completely that she found it difficult to pay attention to the subject which she was discussing.
She tried to banish the influence, but failed. She had forgotten the name which Michael gave to the God whom the Pharaoh had so greatly loved. She could not even recollect the words of his message. Only his luminous form and melancholy eyes were there in the sunlight before her.
She began to wonder which vision was the more fantastic and unreal—the picture which she had visualized of the grand ballroom in the magnificent hotel at Assuan, filled with men and women in modern evening dress, or the figure of the ancient Pharaoh, as he had come to her in this barren valley in the western desert.
"Wake up, Meg!" Freddy said. "Dreaming seems infectious."
Meg knew what her brother meant. So did Mike.
"Don't forget that the practical Lampton mind is a jolly good thing. That old drifter won't like living in a tent or a caravan, on twopence a day, when he's sixty!" Freddy lit his cigarette; he had finished breakfast. "You'll come, of course?" His eyes spoke to Mike. "Gad, what a topping morning it is?"
"Rather!" Mike said abstractedly. "Unless you want me to stay here?"
"Carruthers will be all right here alone—he knows the place as well as I do." Freddy's voice did not express much eagerness for Michael's company at the ball, and Michael knew the reason. Freddy was unable to decide in his own mind whether it was wiser to urge Mike to go and let him see Meg as Freddy knew he would see her in all her pretty finery, and let him enjoy the pleasure of her perfect dancing, or allow him to stay behind and so avoid the risk of meeting the woman whom he knew would be there. He had seen her name in the visitors' list in theEgyptian Gazette. She was staying at the Cataract Hotel at Assuan. He was so divided as to the wisdom of Michael's going or staying that his response had lacked his usual note of sincerity.
"Then I'll go," Michael said, for into his mind had floated a vision of Margaret dressed in her ball-finery and dancing as Freddy's sister would dance—dancing with other men.
"Then that settles it," Freddy said. "We'll go a buster to-morrow night and we'll make up for it after. You can begin real work next week, Meg—sorting and painting, if you care to."
When Freddy was ready to start off to his work, Meg went with him. It was too early for the sun to be dangerous and the air was deliciously fresh and clean. Meg's hands were dug deep down into the pockets of her white silk jersey, just as her brother's were dug deep down into the pockets of his white flannel coat. Meg's long limbs looked almost as clean-cut as her brother's in her closely-fitting white skirt. As Michael watched them walk off together, he said to himself, "They are absurdly alike; they are like twins—they see eye to eye and think mind to mind."
As he said the words his sense of Meg contradicted his last remark, for he knew that he could say things to Meg which Freddy would not understand; he knew that if they had thought mind to mind he would not have asked her to keep the secret which they now held between them.
Thoughts full of tender affection for Freddy made him feel happily contented; to have such a friend and to be allowed to work with him was a privilege deserving of sincere thanks. For a few moments he stood lost in gratitude and praise. These dreaming moments, about which he was so often good-naturedly chaffed, were not entirely wasted; they gave him the spiritual food his nature demanded. The desert holds many prayers.
"Why so abstracted to-day, Meg?" Freddy said, as they reached the site of excavation. Margaret was no great talker at any time, but there was something new in her silence this morning and Freddy felt it.
"Am I abstracted? I didn't know it."
"A bit off colour? Are you feeling the sun? You'd better go back before it gets any hotter and rest more to-day, if we're to go to the dance to-morrow."
"Oh, I adore the sun," Meg said. "I believe in my former incarnation I worshipped it."
"A disciple of Akhnaton? I think we all are, if we only knew it. PoorAkhnaton!"
"Oh, Freddy, who was this Akhnaton? No, I forgot—don't tell me." Her voice, for Meg, was emotional, excited. "I want to spell things out for myself."
"What do you know about him?" Freddy said. "I thought you hadn't begun reading yet? Has Mike been preaching his religion? Mike's dotty on Akhnaton—his religion's all right, but as a king he was an ass."
"No, no, Mike hasn't told me anything about him and I really would rather come to him in his proper place in history. I mustn't dip, though it's a great temptation, but it spoils serious work."
They had stopped and were looking down from the height of the desert to the level of the excavation which was furthest advanced. Things had developed greatly since Margaret's first visit. Now she was able to see that they were at work upon a vast building of some description. The enormous size and the beautiful cutting of the stones and the exquisite strength of the mortarless masonry indicated noble proportions.
"How interesting it's getting!" she said. "I love these blocks of evenly-hewn stone in the sand—they look so mysterious, and eternal."
"I want to take the men off this, if we're going to Assuan to-morrow—it's getting too hot."
"Why?"
"Because there were indications yesterday that we had struck a sort of rubbish-heap of things which had been turned out of the tomb."
"What kind of things?"
"I don't know yet . . . all sorts of things. Probably the relatives of the dead threw them out when they visited the tomb from time to time; just as we throw away faded wreaths and flowers, they threw away accumulations of broken vases and offerings."
"And you don't want the workmen to know?"
"I want to be on hand when they are cleaning it up, and it can't all be done in one day. They are quite capable of sneaking back here before thegaphir'sabout in the morning, to see what they can pick up, to sell to the visitors in Luxor. It's a great temptation."
"I suppose they consider the tiny things they find far more theirs than ours?"
"I suppose they do, but, mind you, the Museum in Cairo gets its pick and the choice of all that's found in Egypt in the various sites of excavation."
"Oh!" Margaret said. "I didn't know that."
"Certainly it does," he said, "and rightly, too, although nothing would be saved or be in any museum if it wasn't for the various European schools. The natives would eventually plunder and steal everything, and if the excavation had all been in the hands of the Egyptian Government, heaven knows where the treasures would be to-day! As it is, Cairo has the finest Egyptian museum of antiquities in the world."
"Akhnaton was buried in this valley?"
"Yes, in later days in his mother's tomb. His first burial-place was at Tel-el-Amarna."
"How odd! That's what he told me last night," Meg said dreamily, almost unconsciously. She could hear again the sad voice of the Pharaoh, saying, "I was laid in my mother's tomb in this valley."
Freddy looked quickly up at her; he had left her to descend to the workmen's level. "So Mike has told you about him, then? I thought he would!"
Margaret blushed to the roots of her hair. "Just one or two things—nothing really very interesting."
"I knew he would, sooner or later. He's got Akhnaton on the brain."
"He really has scarcely mentioned him to me—never until last night."
"Go back, Meg," Freddy said, as he disappeared down a deep channel in the excavations. "It's getting too hot for no hat. You must be careful—you can't afford to play tricks with the sun in Egypt. It's better to worship it like Akhnaton than to trifle with it."
"All right, I'll go," Meg said, and as she went she wondered how it came to pass that Akhnaton was both a sun-worshipper and a devout believer in the Kingdom of God which is within us.
The ballroom at Assuan was a wonderful sight. Margaret had never been to a more brilliant dance. The dresses of the women amazed her; they were so costly and beautiful. The air of Egypt is so dry that their delicacy of texture had been uninjured by travel. The gay uniforms of the English officers, the Orders of the officials, looked their best in the vast room, whose architecture and decorations were a fine reproduction of ancient Egyptian art.
Margaret was radiantly happy; she loved beauty and the dignity of vast surroundings. In Egypt it seemed to her that everything was done on an imposing and noble scale, everything except the little mud villages of the desert, her "dear little brown homes in the East." Happiness made her appear very lovely—indeed, she was beautiful that night and many people asked who the charming girl was, who danced so well and who looked so happy.
She danced very often with Freddy, so naturally people began to say that at last Lampton had been "caught." She had danced very often, too, with Michael, and even Freddy's step had not suited hers so well. With Michael there was something more than mere perfection of dancing; there was the added sympathy of mind as well as body. When his arms encircled her for the first time and Margaret felt him steering her gently but firmly through the well-filled room, such a perfect sense of rest pervaded her senses that a sudden desire to cry, just softly and happily, came to her. Happy Margaret!
Neither of them cared to speak while they were dancing; they remained as silent as they had done when they stood together in the vast stretch of the great Sahara, but they were conscious—and happily so—of each other's enjoyment. Could two young people be so close to each other, two people so greatly in sympathy with one another, and not know something of the thought in each other's minds?
"Will you let me take you in to supper?" was all that Michael said, at the end of the last dance which they were to have together. He handed her reluctantly over to her waiting partner as he spoke.
Meg nodded her assent and smiled radiantly over her partner's shoulder as she whirled off.
Her beautiful white shoulders showed up the duskiness of her hair; her head was distinguished and arrestive. As Michael was watching her and waiting for her to come round the room again to where he was standing, so that their eyes might meet, a gentle, caressing hand was laid on his own and a voice said:
"Ah! now I know why you have not looked for me. Who is she?"
Michael started. The low, tender voice instantly thrilled every nerve in his body, while at the same moment an overwhelming desire to slip away and lose himself amongst the dancers came over him.
"She is a fine-looking creature," the voice went on, "but that type gets coarse at forty, don't you think?"
Michael swung round quickly and faced the lovely woman who had spoken to him. Her figure, in spite of its childish slimness, suggested not youthful purity but a sensuous grace. In her soft, flesh-tinted gown of chiffon, which left her arms and neck quite bare, a dress which merely suggested a veiled covering for her tiny body, she was temptingly feminine. To most men she would have been irresistible, for she was as supple and straight as a child of thirteen.
Her eyes gazed familiarly into Michael's; they were inviting and exquisitely lovely. Even Mrs. Mervill's bitterest enemies had to admit the charm of her eyes. Hard and cruel they could be, just like the uncut amethysts which in colour they resembled—eyes of a deep, bluish purple. They had looked their cruellest a moment ago, for envy had crossed her path. Every inch of her tiny person was envious of the girl who had smiled over her partner's shoulder to Michael Amory. She was envious because she could see at a glance that Margaret was all that was fine and clean and noble in womanhood. The girl whom Michael Amory had been looking at would always get what was best in men, while she could only get what was worst.
"My partner has had to leave me," she said to Michael, for he had paid no attention to her remarks about Margaret. "He had a touch of fever; it came on quite suddenly. Will you take me out of the ball-room?"
They had moved off together, Michael unable to help himself; he could not allow her to go alone.
"If you aren't dancing, let us go and sit out on the balcony—it's too lovely to be indoors. Now, isn't it?" she said, as they reached the wide covered loggia, dotted with palms and basket-chairs and small tables, which looked over the black rocks of the first cataract on the Nile, a scene which in all Egypt has no equal, for it is unique and extraordinary.
Beyond the river, with its black rocks, which showed in the water like the indefinite forms of seals or shoals of swirling porpoises, there was the bright yellow sand of the desert, which led into a world of primitive silence, while above them and all around them there were the stars and the night of Egypt.
Mrs. Mervill had left the ball-room early, because she knew that the balcony would be almost empty during the first part of the evening.
"Isn't having this all to ourselves better than dancing in that crowd?This is Egypt."
"It's beautiful," Michael said, as he arranged the cushions in her chair to suit her taste, which was scarcely in keeping with the views of a dignified woman. When he had finished, Mrs. Mervill let her hand slip down his coat-sleeve—she had laid it there as she spoke to him—until it rested on his wrist; her fingers were caressing.
"Tell me," she said, looking up into his face with a winning and soft expression, "what have you been doing with yourself since we parted? You have been much in my thoughts—never out of them, indeed."
"My usual work in the camp," Michael said. "Its interest always increases, and although it seems pretty much the same every day to ordinary people, to us it is full of variety."
"Lucky man! We poor women have no such distractions. I want to live in the desert," she said eagerly. "I want to sleep in the open under these stars."
Anyone might have made the same remark with noarrière penséein their words. Mrs. Mervill could not. Her remark contained an invitation; Michael knew it.
"Can you never get away?" she asked. "It would be my expedition, if you would run it for me."
Michael moved from her side, with the pretence of drawing a chair to within speaking distance of her. She had reluctantly to let his wrist slip from her fingers.
"Say you will arrange it," she pleaded. "For weeks I have felt the call of the desert and you know you'd love to come."
"I can't do it," Michael said, almost sternly. "Please don't tempt me. . . I have work to do."
"Oh, but I will tempt you!" She laughed the soft, low laugh of passion. "By every means in my power. With you it is so difficult to know what will tempt you most. Am I to appeal to the mystic side of you, or to the human? I think the human Michael will suit me best, the Michael who longs to let himself go and enjoy the fullness of Egypt and the wonders of the desert!"
"Don't appeal to any part of me," he said quickly. "Leave me to do my work in the best possible way—try not to act as a disturbing influence."
"Then I have been a disturbing influence?" Michael's voice had betrayed the fact that his work had not been accomplished without difficulty.
"Yes," he said, for the spirit of truth was always uppermost in Michael. "For some days after I left you the last time I found great difficulty in concentrating my mind on my work. . . . I was dissatisfied."
"Then I succeeded!" The amethyst eyes, devoid of all hardness now, caressed Michael and disturbed his nerves. The woman was very beautiful, and he was conscious that her mind was set on her desire to win him. He knew that it was not love; he knew that their intimacy was not one of wholesome friendship. He was becoming more and more awake to the fact that this wealthy woman, who looked like a child but for the expression of her eyes, had taken an unreasoning desire to have him for her lover. In a measure he could not but feel flattered, for with her beauty and wealth she could have had the attention of better men than himself. He was too generous in his judgment of women to attribute her desire to the lowest motives, the prospect of enjoying through another the innocence which she had lost herself so long ago.
"I tried to reach you, Mike. I used every effort of my will-power, or mind-power, or whatever power you like to call it. I insisted on your feeling me. I sent myself out of myself to you."
"Why did you do it?" he said. He had leaned forward and had laid his hand on the cushions of her chair, at the back of her head. His distressed voice was less harsh.
"Why did I do it? Because, dear, I want you." Her voice was low and wooing; it was one of her charms.
Michael did not answer. His senses were beginning to throb. The sound of a native earthen drum, with its sensual thud, thud, thudding, and the watery note of a key striking a glass bottle, as an accompaniment to the slow measures of bare feet on the deck of a Nile boat, added an undefinable touch, of Oriental passion to the scene.
Michael tried to draw away his hand, but she caught it and pulled his arm round her neck and held his long fingers imprisoned under her chin.
He protested. The thud, thud, thud of thedarabukkehbelow kept time with the throbbing of his pulses, while the subconscious visualizing of the body-movements of the Sudanese dancers aided and abetted the woman in her designs.
"You know, dear, you are behaving very foolishly. I must never see you again if you do this sort of thing. It can only lead to terrible unhappiness for us both."
She gently kissed his fingers, pressing her teeth against his knuckles—with all her education and fashionable clothes, a creature as primitive as any tent-dweller in the desert.
"Don't say you won't see me again. I won't be foolish, I promise. ButI am very lonely, you don't know how lonely, Michael."
"Poor little woman!" he said breathlessly; he was genuinely sorry for her. If her nature craved for love and affection, it was hard for her to live as she did, without it.
"It's Egypt," she said, "Egypt and the desert. I want you all alone, Michael, in the loneliest part of the loneliest desert in the world, and I want as many kisses as there are stars in the heavens—kisses that only my love and Egypt can teach you how to give!"
"I must leave you," Michael said again, "if you will speak like that."
He got up to go. Mrs. Mervill also rose from her reclining position on her long deck-chair, and sat upright.
"I do, I do!" she said, while she held up her beautiful lips to his face. "There is no one to see, there is no one to care! I want a kiss for every star there is in the heavens."
The man could bear it no longer; all Egypt was tempting him. He bent his head and kissed her lips.
From the river below came the long cries to Allah of the Moslem boatmen and the clear music of an'oodor lute; the deep note of the native drums had been silenced. It had given way to the song of an Arab tenor. The music of the'ood, whose seven double strings, made of lamb's gut, are played with a slip of a vulture's feather, drifted through the clear air. The tenor song was an outpouring of a lover's full heart. The passion of the night had triumphed.
At their feet lay the black rocks and the swirling waters of Egypt's Aegean and the buried city of Syene, and in the distance, yet surely affecting their senses with its tragedy and grace, was Philae, the fairy sanctuary of the Nile. In the submerged temple of Philae lies the bridal chamber of the beloved Osiris and his wife Isis.
None of all this was lost upon Michael, whose nature was ever tuned to the concert pitch of his surroundings. Assuan affected him as a gorgeous orchestra affects a lover of Wagner.
But the sound of the hotel band, bringing a waltz to a close, made Mrs. Mervill leave her lounge-chair and seat herself circumspectly on a more upright one. Michael did not sit down; he wandered about, speaking to her abruptly and unhappily at brief intervals.
She was answering one of his questions when Margaret Lampton, flushed and radiant with the excitement of dancing, came upon the scene; her partner was a little behind her. Mrs. Mervill neither saw her nor heard her footsteps; Michael had both seen and heard her. Margaret, thinking that he was alone, walked quickly towards him. Suddenly she heard a hidden voice say caressingly,
"I will promise you anything you like, Michael mine, and keep it, too, if you will try to see me as often as ever you can. Remember how lonely I am, and that I shall live for your visits."
Margaret stopped. Egypt had become as cold as the Arctic. She felt lost. Her intention had been to remind Michael that it was almost supper-time. Her partner was now by her side. He knew Michael Amory and spoke to him.
Mrs. Mervill had risen from her chair and as she came forward, Margaret hated her, even while she thought that she was the fairest and most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Michael introduced the two women to each other, excellent foils as they were in their beauty and type.
As Margaret gave one of her steadfast honest looks right into the eyes of the delicately-tinted woman in front of her, she was conscious of an appalling dislike and fear of her. She was equally conscious of the woman's antagonism to herself, although her words had been charming and friendly.
"If she wasn't beautiful and tiny, I'd like to wring her neck and throw her to the crocodiles below!"
This was what might be interpreted as Margaret's true feelings as she answered Mrs. Mervill's question and succeeded in making some banal remarks about the view and the magnificence of the hotel. When she had said all that politeness demanded of her, she turned away, a trifle disconsolately.
"Please wait one moment, Miss Lampton," Michael said. "I think this is the supper-interval. Mrs. Mervill," he said, "can I take you back to your partner? I am engaged to Miss Lampton for supper."
"No, thanks," she said, "I didn't engage myself to anyone for supper." Her eyes plainly expressed the fact that they had hitherto at these dances always enjoyed the supper-interval together. "Will you be very kind and send a waiter out here with a glass of champagne and some sandwiches? That is all I want."
Michael looked disturbed. "But I don't like leaving you alone."
"I prefer the company of the stars," she said, "to just anybody—reallyI do. I never feel that one comes to Egypt for these hotel dances."This was meant for Margaret, to make her feel frivolous and vulgar.
Margaret refused to accept it. "My brother and I have been dancing every dance and every extra and forgetting all about Egypt. Have you?" She turned to Mike.
"No, I have been sitting this last one out with Mrs. Mervill. She feels tired. And certainly Egypt is very much here." He pointed to the scene before them.
"Yes, quite another Egypt," Margaret said. "Egypt has so many souls."
"And I have to be a little careful," Mrs. Mervill said, "of over-fatigue."
"I am sorry," Margaret said, while she inwardly noted the woman's perfect health. The slender feminine appearance of her rival had nothing in common with ill-health; a blush-rose bud was not more softly and evenly tinted. She suggested to Margaret something good to eat—pink and white ice-creams mingled together in a crystal bowl.
Healthily devoid as Margaret was of sex-consciousness, it was curious that this first close inspection of Mrs. Mervill should have told her what she never dreamed of before, or even thought about—that she loved Michael Amory. This woman was going to come between herself and Michael; that there was great intimacy between them she felt certain, also that Michael, even though he might care for the woman, was not himself under her influence. She had never seen him look as he looked now.
The partner who had brought Margaret out on to the balcony constituted himself Mrs. Mervill's cavalier. He was immensely struck by her beauty and was inwardly overjoyed when Michael Amory introduced him to her. He had not engaged himself for supper because there had been no one with whom he cared to spend the time, except Margaret, and she was engaged to Michael. Now that he had obtained an introduction to Mrs. Mervill, he was delighted to attend to her wants.
If Michael Amory had seen Millicent Mervill's attitude towards her companion, he might have felt—and very naturally—a certain amount of vanity. Born with little or no sense of honour or morals, she was extremely fastidious. No one could have been more selective. Ninety-nine per cent. of the men she met bored her not to tears, but to rudeness; for the hundredth she might feel an unbridled passion.
Margaret and her companion were seated at a little supper-table in the immense dining-room of the hotel, a room which been built after the proportions and decorated in the manner of an Egyptian temple. Their table was close to a column, which was decorated from pedestal to capital with the most familiar mythological figures of ancient Egypt. Tall lotus flowers with their green leaves decorated the lower portion of it. The whole thing certainly was an amazingly clever reproduction of one of the ancient columns of the famous hypostyle hall at Karnak. A gayer scene could hardly be imagined, for the bright colours of the ancient decorations had been faithfully copied.
Margaret had been talking rather more than was her wont to Michael, about things which neither really interested her nor were in sympathy with their mood. Their former intimate silence had given place to a banal conversation, which hurt them, one as much as the other, while they kept it up.
The nicest part of the evening, for so Meg had thought that it would be, was proving a failure, a dire and pitiful failure. The only thing to do was to accept Michael under the new conditions and get what pleasure she could out of the magnificent scene. The Egyptian servants, in their long white garments and high red tarbushes, the Nubians, in their full white drawers and bright green sashes and turbans, were moving silently about, administering as only native servants can administer to the wants of the fashionably-gowned women and brightly-uniformed men who filled the magnificent hall.
"How absurd that woman looks," Margaret said, "sitting with her back to that figure of Isis." She knew now at a glance the goddess Isis as she was most familiarly represented. "I do hope I don't look quite so grotesque!"
Michael looked at the woman, whose hair was decorated with an enormous egrette's crest, in the manner of a Red Indian's head-dress. Margaret knew quite well that she herself did not in any way look grotesque; since she had been in Egypt she had conceived a horror of the eccentricities of Western fashions, therefore her speech was insincere.
"Of course you don't," Michael said absently. "You look just awfully nice." He felt shy and blushed as he spoke, for he knew that he had severed himself from Margaret by an unspeakable gulf, that he had now no right to say anything intimate to her. Earlier in the evening he could have said with frank enthusiasm how beautiful he thought her, if an occasion like the present had offered itself.
They were now at the ice-creams, wonderful concoctions with glowing lights inside them, and their futile conversation had dribbled out, but the silence which had fallen upon them was constrained; it had nothing in common with the old happy silence of mental sympathy, the silence of united minds.
Margaret had still two dances to give Michael, and she wondered how they were to get through them. The supper had proved heavy and dragging. It seemed scarcely possible that they were the two people who had stood, delighting in each other's companionship, on the high ridge of the Sahara desert two evenings ago, that it was this man to whom she had told her wonderful dream. She wondered if he had forgotten it.
As she thought of her dream, their eyes met. Michael's dropped quickly. With Mrs. Mervill's kisses still burning into his soul, he banished the thought of the divine King. The seed of evil which she had planted in the garden of his soul many weeks ago had been watered and nourished to-night. It had sprung forth like the green blades on the banks of the Nile after the inundation.
As Michael's eyes dropped, Margaret took her courage in both hands and said as brightly as she could, "We're not enjoying ourselves particularly, are we? We seem to have lost each other. Shall we cut our two dances and try to find ourselves again in the valley? I hate this sort of thing."
"If you wish it." Michael's voice was reproachful.
"Do be honest—you know I'm boring you. You have lots of friends here, and I can get partners."
"Things do seem to have taken a wrong turn," he said, "but it was not of my willing." Inwardly he cursed the hour he had ever come. She would never believe that it had been to see her in her evening-dress and to enjoy the rapture of dancing with her.
"We are neither of us much good at pretending," Margaret said. "But never mind—better luck next time! And we had some lovely dances in the early part of the evening."
Her words, without meaning it, implied that before she had been introduced to Mrs. Mervill, they had been happy. They had risen at Margaret's instigation from their table and were wending their way out of the supper-room. Michael was drifting towards the wide balcony, towards the fresh cool air of the river.
"No," Meg said determinedly, "not there." A vision of Mrs. Mervill, pink and fair and seductive, had risen before her, the rose-leaf creature with the hard eyes, who had so abruptly broken her sympathy with Michael.
Michael, without speaking, quickly turned the other way. He let her through the big entrance to the front door of the hotel. The view was ugly and uninteresting, like the surroundings of any huge Western public offices or government buildings. The glory of the hotel was the view from the balcony, overlooking the Nile, and its superb interior decorations.
"The old trade-route to Nubia lies back there," Michael said, indicating the desert, which lay out of sight at the back of the hotel.
"The old route to 'golden-treasured Nubia'?" Margaret said. "Fancy, so close to this fashionable hotel—who would ever dream it!"
"The caravan-route to Nubia—the Kush of the Bible—an immortal road.To me the word Nubia is full of suggestion."
There was something so distant in the tone of Michael's voice as he spoke, that Margaret found little pleasure in hearing what he had to tell her. How delightful he could have been upon such a subject as the old trade-route to Nubia she knew only too well, so well that she was not going to let herself be hurt by his aloof way of mentioning it.