The Project Gutenberg eBook, There was a King in Egypt, by Norma Lorimer


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Title: There was a King in Egypt


Author: Norma Lorimer



Release Date: December 26, 2007  [eBook #23994]

Language: English

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THERE WAS A KING IN EGYPT

by

NORMA LORIMER

Author of
  "Catherine Sterling,"
  "By the Waters of Germany,"
  "By the Waters of Sicily,"
  "The Second Woman,"
  "The Gods' Carnival,"
  "A Wife Out of Egypt"
  "On Desert Altars,"
  "On Etna," Etc. Etc.







London
Stanley Paul & Co
31 Essex Street, Strand, W.C.2

First published in 1918




PREFACE

The monarch indicated in _There was a King in Egypt_ is Akhnaton, the
heretic Pharaoh, first brought home to the English reader by the well
known Egyptian archaeologist, Mr. Arthur Weigall.  Akhnaton, or
Amenhotep IV., has an interest for the whole world as the first
Messiah.  Like Our Lord, he was of Syrian parentage--on the mother's
side.  Interest in him is undying, because underlying his Sun-symbolism
we have the first foreshadowings of the altruism of Christianity.

The book is not directly devoted to Akhnaton.  It is about a young
English Egyptologist, who is excavating the tomb of Akhnaton's mother,
in which the Pharaoh's exhumed body found its final repose; his sister;
and an Irish mystic, who copies the tomb-paintings excavated before
their freshness fades.  Aton-worship and Mohammedanism have an almost
equal fascination for this Irishman, and the romance is permeated with
their mysticism.  The prophecies of a Mohammedan saint who has attained
the light by a life of abstinence and self-discipline, influence the
current of the romance no less than the visions of the Pharaoh Messiah,
whose pure religion threatened his country with disasters like the
Russian revolution.

For the historical facts I am indebted to the brilliant _Akhnaton,
Pharaoh of Egypt_,[1] of Mr. Weigall, late Chief Inspector of Monuments
in Upper Egypt.  The character of the Egyptian Messiah has fascinated
me ever since I began to read Egyptian history, and Mr. Weigall writes
with the grace and colour of a Pierre Loti.  I have always used his
translations of Akhnaton's words, and very often his own words in
describing Akhnaton.

I take this opportunity of thanking Mr. Weigall for his ungrudging
permission to quote from him, and I should like him to know that his
book was the inspiration of _There was a King in Egypt_.

I must also acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. Walter Tyndall's fine
volume, _Below the Cataracts_,[2]--he is equally successful as author
and artist--for my description of the tomb of Queen Thiy.

The teachings of the reformed Mohammedanism scattered through my book
are derived from the propaganda works of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, especially
his _Teachings of Islam_.[3]

I trust that my readers will find the mysticism of the book not a clog
upon the wheels of the romance of Excavation in Egypt, but Virgil's
"vital breeze."


NORMA LORIMER.
  7, PITCULLEN TERRACE, PERTH, SCOTLAND.



[1] Published by Wm. Blackwood & Sons.

[2] Published by Heinemann.

[3] Published by Dulau.




THERE WAS A KING IN EGYPT


PART I

CHAPTER I

Dawn held the world in stillness.  In the vast stretches of barren
hills and soft sands there was nothing living or stirring but the
figure of an Englishman, standing at the door of his tent.

At the hour of sunrise and sunset the East is its own.  Every
suggestion of Western influence and foreign invasion is wiped out.  The
going and the coming of the sun throws the land of the Pharaohs, the
kingdom of Ra, the great Sun God, whose cradle was at Heliopolis, back
to the days when Egypt was the world; to the days when the sun governed
the religion of her people; to the days when civilization had barely
touched the Mediterranean and the world knew not Rome; back again to
the days when the Nile, the Mother of Life, bordered by bands of
fertile, food-giving land, had not as yet sheltered the infant Moses in
her reeds.  Dawn in Egypt is the dawn of civilization.

Each dawn saw Michael Amory, wrapped in his thickest coat, standing
outside his tent, watching and waiting for the glory of Egypt, for Ra,
the Sun God, to appear above the horizon of the desert.

To stand alone, nerve-tense and oppressed by the soundless sands, and
surrounded by the Theban Hills, in whose bosoms lie the eternal remains
of the world's first kings, drew him so strongly that, tired as he
might be with his previous day's work, he seldom slept later than the
hour which links us with the day that is past and the morrow which
holds the magic of the future.

For that half-hour only his higher self was conscious of existence, and
it was infinitely nearer to God than he was aware of.  The silence of
the desert and its simplicity, which to the complex mind of Western man
is so mysterious, banished all material thoughts and even the
consciousness of his own body, and left him a naked soul, alone in the
world, encompassed with Divinity, a world whose hills and rolling sands
had known neither labour nor strife, nor the despotism of kings.

For the dead Pharaohs, lying in their tombs under the hills, in the
grandest monuments ever wrought by the vanity of man, were forgotten.
His long days of labour in their depths might never have been.  Man and
his place in the universe were wiped out.

The cold was intense.  Michael shivered and turned up the collar of his
coat.  A faint light had appeared on the horizon, a pale streak like a
silver thread, which widened and widened until it spread into the
higher heavens; with its spreading the indefinite forms of moving
figures appeared--ghostly figures of dawn.

Michael knew that they would appear; he knew that, just as soon as the
streak of light grew in width from a faint thread to a wider band, he
would see them, dignified, stately figures, like white-robed priests,
walking desertwards from the horizon to his tent.

Although he had seen the same figures every morning for some months, he
was not tired of watching them.  It always gave him pleasure to recall
how vividly they had at first reminded him of the pictures, familiar to
him as a boy, of the Wise Men following the star in the east.  But
these were not wise men coming to pay homage or bring presents to the
Galilean Babe who came to be called the Prince of Peace; they were the
Mohammedan workmen who were employed by the Exploration School to which
Michael Amory had attached himself; their labour was confined to the
rougher preliminary digging and the clearing away of the accumulation
of sand and debris on sites which had been selected for excavation.

As the dawn slipped back and counted itself with the years that are
spent and the first yellow gleam appeared in the sky, Michael saw the
tall figures go down on their knees and press their foreheads to the
sand.  It was their third prayer of the day: devout Mohammedans begin
their new day at sunset; their second prayer is at nightfall, when it
is quite dark; their third is at daybreak.

Michael knew that the moment _el isfirar_, or the first yellow glow,
appeared in the heavens, the white figures would turn to the east and
perform their _subh_, or daybreak devotion.  He knew that it would be
finished before the golden globe appeared above the rim of the desert,
for did not the Prophet counsel his people not to pray exactly at
sunrise or sunset or at noon, because they might be confounded with the
infidels who worshipped the sun?  Yet it gave him a fresh thrill each
morning to watch these desert worshippers prostrate themselves in
undoubting faith before their omnipotent God.  In the untrodden desert,
with its mingling of sky and sand, their perfect trust and faith in
Allah seemed a convincing and evident belief.  At such times he forgot
that these same men were the children of Superstition and that one and
all of them were held in the bondage of _genii_.  He also forgot that
their performance of five prayers a day, which is the number prescribed
for the devout, did not necessarily make them men of honour.  A perfect
trust in Allah gives a bad man a long rope.

As the figures drew nearer and the golden globe rested for one moment
on the sands of the desert, for that one brief moment before its rays
broke into the amazing splendour which is Egypt's, the world became
less mysterious, more familiar.  Things relating to the day's work
forced themselves upon Michael's mind.  His bath and breakfast and many
other practical things began to usurp his thoughts, while the barking
of dogs, the movement in the hut of the "boys," brought him back to the
common, everyday life of the excavating camp.

While he was dressing he remembered that Freddy Lampton's sister was to
arrive that day.  For a moment or two his mind was completely usurped
with a vision of what the girl would be like.  Subconsciously his
manhood quickened.

Yet the very idea of a woman intruding herself upon their strange and
exquisitely-intellectual life--a life made healthy by the long hours of
physical labour in the various portions of the excavation--slightly
annoyed him.

Fleeting pictures of Lampton as a girl rose and faded before his eyes
as he hurriedly shaved himself, slipped into his flannels and adjusted
his necktie as punctiliously as though he were going to a tennis-party
at Mena House Hotel.  It is typical of Englishmen in the East that the
young men in the excavating camps, and especially in the one to which
Michael belonged, showed as much regard for their personal appearance
and nicety of dress, even when their day's work was to be done in the
bowels of the earth, down a shaft as deep as a mine, as they did in the
golden days of their life at Oxford or Cambridge.  Michael Amory was
perhaps as a rule the least careful of the digging party, because he
was by temperament a dreamer; and his friend, Freddy Lampton, knew that
if he was not careful and on his guard he would become "a slacker."
Freddy, in spite of his acknowledged ability as a scholar and
Egyptologist, was practical and conventional in his methods and mode of
living.  Michael Amory had fits of exactness and fits of what he
considered conventionality; he had also his fits of slackness, days in
which Freddy Lampton would let his blue eyes rest on his
carelessly-tied necktie, or on his shoelaces, which were an offence to
his eyes.  Freddy's exquisite delicacy of touch and his eyes, which
were trained to a fine pitch of exactitude for minute detail, two
characteristics essential for his work as an excavator, made it painful
for him to be in the company of anyone who offended his sense of
personal nicety.

But visions of Lampton's sister were to be dismissed.  She would be
good-looking, of course, because Freddy's sister could scarcely be
anything else; his blue eyes, clear colouring and sunlit hair would be
beautiful in a girl.  But Michael Amory had no desire to encourage any
thoughts which gave woman a place in his mind.  The very visualizing of
Lampton as a girl, comical as it had been, had forced before his eyes
another face and another form which he had been striving to forget.
Whenever he was idle, and too often when he was busy over some piece of
work which ought to have engrossed his entire thoughts, her haunting
charm and beauty would suddenly become more real and vivid than the
bright blues and greens and reds of the pigments on the white walls of
the tomb upon which he was at work.  With well-practised mind-control
he had learned to pull down a blind on her vision, to blot it out from
his thoughts.  On this morning, when he was hurrying through his
dressing so as to be in time for breakfast, always a matter of
difficulty with him, even though he had many hours in which to put on
his few clothes, he shrank from thinking about the arrival of the girl
who was coming to live with her brother in this strange valley, which
had been the underground cemetery for countless centuries of the
tomb-builders of Egypt.

When he was almost dressed and the sun was high in the heavens and its
power was beginning to warm the night-chilled valley, a stone was flung
into his tent.  "Come out, you lazy beggar!  The coffee's getting cold."

It was Lampton's voice and Lampton's nicety of aim.  He had not been up
since dawn; his boy had only brought him his cup of early tea half an
hour ago, yet he was bathed and shaved and as neatly dressed as the
most fastidious woman could desire.

"Right-ho!" Michael shouted back.  "Don't wait for me."

"I should jolly well think I won't!  Who'd be such an ass?"  There was
the best of human fellowship in Freddy's voice, but he knew his friend
too well to risk the chance of spoiling his coffee by waiting for him.

After stretching out his arms and opening his lungs to the fresh dry
air of the newborn day, Freddy turned into the dining-room.  The
mess-room and common sitting-room of the camp was in a wooden hut.
Lampton's bedroom was at the back of it, as was also the one which had
been set apart for his sister; it by right belonged to the
Overseer-General and Controller of the Excavations and Monuments of
Upper Egypt.  Margaret Lampton was to use it and her brother was to
evacuate his room when the overseer announced that he was coming to pay
one of his visits of inspection to the camp.

Michael Amory lived in a tent, as did one or two other Englishmen who
in busy and prosperous years helped in the work of excavating.  At the
present moment they were slack, which meant that funds were low and
there was no fine work to be done which necessitated the individual
spade and pick work of European Egyptologists.  A new site was being
cleared, so that the work had consisted for some time of the first
clearing away of sand and stones and the debris which had collected
during the thousands of years that had passed since the tomb which
Freddy hoped to discover had been carved in the bowels of the earth,
and the Pharaoh had been laid to rest in it.  At such times there was
little work for experts to do, so the camp shrank and left Lampton, who
was the head of it, and one of England's finest Egyptologists, alone
with his native workmen.

He had allowed his old Oxford chum, Michael Amory, to join him on
condition that he put in so many hours' work every day in connection
with the excavations.  Michael's stipulated work, the work which he had
undertaken to do, was the making of exact copies of the mural paintings
and decorations, such as Lampton required, and to help in the evenings
to clean and sort and arrange the small objects which the workmen found
each day.  In the debris they often found amulets and small earthenware
vases and minute pieces of broken pottery, the very smallest of which
suggested theories as regards the period and history of the monument.
The texture of the glaze used, or the nature of the pottery itself, the
small remnant of decoration on them, or the trademark on the broken
base of a vase, all were valuable links in the chain of history which
is unfolding itself to the eager eyes of Egyptian exploration schools.

When Michael at last appeared, Freddy looked up from his bacon and
eggs.  "I say, Margaret comes to-night."

"Yes, I know."

Freddy raised his blue eyes and gave Michael one of his quick glances.
"Remembered, did you?"

"Yes--the fact suddenly came into my head when I was shaving.  I say,
what are you going to do with her?  Won't she be awfully bored?"

"Margaret doesn't know what the word bored means.  Give her enough
freedom and lots of sunshine--that's all she wants."

"Sounds the right sort."'

"One of the best--old Margaret's all right!"

"Is she like you in appearance?"

"Good Lord, no!"

Michael's enthusiasm was damped.  He wanted her to be like Freddy, to
have his short, straight nose and his strong rounded chin and beautiful
mouth.  For his looks were wasted on a man; Michael wanted to see them
repeated and softened in a girl.  As his eyes rested contemplatingly on
his companion's bent head and youthfully-lean figure, he began to
visualize a very plain, dowdy sister.  The "Good Lord, no!" probably
meant that although Freddy was not the least vain of his own
extraordinary good looks, he could not help exclaiming at the idea of
his dowdy sister being considered like him.

Michael had never seen her, because Freddy and Margaret had been left
orphans when they were little children.  They had been adopted by
different relatives, so that Michael had never had the opportunity of
meeting his friend's sister while they were together at Oxford or when
he visited Freddy in his uncle's home.

"Pass the marmalade!" said Freddy.  "And I say, old chap, I wish you'd
go and meet Margaret!"

Their eyes met as Michael handed him the marmalade, which was the one
thing in the world which Lampton said he could not live without.

"Meet your sister?" Michael said.  "I will, if you can't, but
where?--and won't she expect you?"

"She ought to be on the ferry at five o'clock--I've made all the other
arrangements, but I do wish you would meet her there and bring her up
the valley.  I simply can't, and Margaret knows that she is only
allowed to come here on condition that her visit makes no earthly
difference to my work.  I daren't leave the men alone to-day--there's
too much lying about.  We are getting pretty 'hot' and they know it."

Michael looked up eagerly.  "By Jove, is that so?"

"Getting hot" was expressive of getting close to a find.  It was the
old saying which they had used as children when they played
hide-and-seek.

"Yes, I think we are on the right track and I want to get ahead, so if
you will go down to the ferry and fetch her up here I'll be awfully
obliged to you."

"Right you are, old chap.  I'll be there at five o'clock, and if she's
not punctual I'll do a bit of sketching.  You're sure everything else
will be all right?"

"I don't think she'll be late, because she is to be in Luxor by eleven
o'clock.  She is to rest there until it gets cooler and Abdul is to
bring her over the river from the hotel.  The donkeys will be at the
ferry to meet her.  Mohammed is very anxious for her to ride his camel"
(Mohammed was the sheikh of the district); "he thinks it more proper
and fitting for my sister to make her entry into his district on a
camel, but I don't feel certain that Margaret would appreciate the
honour.  He is keen to 'do her proud.'"

"Good old Mohammed!" Michael said.  "He has a great sense of dignity
and convention."

"And of hospitality," Lampton said.  "He never forgets that as the
sheikh of the district he is its host as well."

That was all that was said about Margaret's arrival.  The two men
lapsed into silence until breakfast was over.  If they had been two
women discussing the coming of a man in their midst, there might have
been more to say on the subject.  In silence Freddy lit his cigarette
and wandered into Margaret's room.  It was as bare and plainly
furnished as a convent cell or a room in a small log-hut in a
frontier-camp in Canada--just the necessary bed and table, a washstand
and one chair.  It was scrupulously clean, and the white
mosquito-curtain, which was suspended from the roof and dropped over
the little iron bed like a bride's veil, gave the room a pleasant
virginal atmosphere.

Freddy came back to the sitting-room, evidently satisfied.  His quick
eye had noticed that the "boy" had carried out his orders.

"Meg's an awful girl for books," he said, as he carried off a bundle of
yellow-paper-bound French novels and one or two volumes of the Temple
Classics to her room.

"She'd better begin on this," he said, as he returned in search of
still more.  "She can't do better"--he lifted up the weighty tome of
Maspero's _Dawn of Civilization_.

"A bit dry, isn't it, for a beginner?"

"Not for Meg," Freddy said.  "She can tackle pretty stiff stuff.  At
college she used to suck the guts out of a book like a weasel sucking
blood from a rabbit."

"Blue stocking!" Michael said to himself.  He abhorred the type of
ardent, eager, studious woman with whom he had come in contact during
his university life.  "Able and abominable" he called them.

In less than ten minutes the two companions had separated; the one,
with his paint-box and camp-stool in his hand, made his way to the tomb
where he was copying with delicate and extraordinary exactitude the
exquisite figures and heads painted on the walls and pillars of the
vast building; the other directed his steps to the site where the band
of native excavators was already at work.

What a strange sight it presented in the brilliant morning sunshine!
To the untutored eye nothing more or less than a vast rubbish-heap of
sand and stones and broken rocks, with here and there patches of
sparsely-clad natives working away with pickaxes and the tall figure of
a white-robed _gaphir_, standing on a hillock of sand, watching them
with unremitting care.  On the sides of the vast ashpits long lines of
"boys," toiling like ants up steep inclines, were carrying rush-baskets
full of rubbish on their shoulders.

Yet these ignorant _fellahin_ were playing their part, and an
indispensable one, in laying bare to modern eyes the history of the
world's first civilization.  This vast rubbish-heap, where men with
pickaxes and boys with baskets, full of the dust and sand of ages,
toiled from dawn until sunset, would in the course of time yield
perhaps to the Egyptologist one of the long-looked-for links in the
lost centuries of Egypt's story, or be transformed into a wonderful
picture-gallery of Egyptian art.

Nothing could look less inviting, less interesting, as Freddy
approached it, for as yet there was little or nothing for the untutored
eye to see but the debris of familiar desert rubbish.  But Freddy
Lampton knew otherwise.  Only yesterday the most experienced of the
workmen had struck something hard, something which told him that they
had finished with loose sand and broken rocks and had struck the
ancient handiwork of man.

The site chosen had been a mere conjecture on Freddy Lampton's part, a
conjecture guided by scientific knowledge and careful research.  He
felt convinced that the tomb which they were looking for was close to
the spot where they were working.  Indications such as the excavator
looks for had decided him to begin work on the site.  The discovery
yesterday had been nothing more or less than the first indication of a
narrow flight of steps, cut in the virgin desert rock, a stairway
probably built by the tomb-builders for the use of the workmen, in
order to carry away baskets of sand and rubbish without slipping.

The moment that the expert workman had come across this staircase, they
had suspended work until "Effendi" had been sent for and found.  Under
his eye and partly by his own pickaxe, the little flight of embryo
steps, with a very steep gradient, had been laid bare.  In the vast
expanse which the work covered, it seemed a very small thing, but the
greatest underground temples--for the tombs are veritable temples--of
Egypt, and some of the most wonderful of her monuments, have been
discovered by far fainter clues.  The little staircase, about twenty
feet below the surface of the sand, was enough to fill the young
Englishman's heart with hope.  He had come upon man's handiwork--no
doubt they would soon come upon more important masonry.

When all the workmen had saluted the Effendi with respectful salaams
and returned to their common toil, Freddy Lampton addressed the native
overseer.  He was enveloped in a white woollen hooded cloak, for the
heat of the day had not yet begun; he also wore a fine turban; while
the _fellahin_ who did the roughest work wore only white skull-caps and
cotton drawers to their knees and full shirts of blue or white cotton,
open from the neck to the waist.  A few of the better-paid older men
wore turbans of cheap white muslin, wrapped round brown felt
skull-caps, or fezes.  The carriers of rubbish, who received the
smallest pay of any, dispensed with the drawers as well as with the
turban.  In the sunlight their one garment, a blue or white shirt,
stood out against the yellow sand as they wound their way in Indian
file from the low level of the excavation to the place in the desert
where they threw down their burdens.

The _gaphir_ led his master a few steps from where the staircase had
been excavated the day before and then bade him look own.  Freddy's
quick eye detected a horizontal line of masonry, the beginning of a
strongly-built wall.  The men had earthed it that morning, it was only
a narrow strip, but it would have been against the strictest rules to
have excavated more without informing the "Effendi."

The _gaphir_, a splendid man and very reliable, adored his enthusiastic
English master, whose good looks and well-bred, unfailing courtesy of
speech alone would have made his personality irresistible to the Arab.
Added to his good looks and to his manner of "one who is born to be
obeyed," Freddy had courage and great ability and--best of all in the
_gaphir's_ eyes--a silent respect for the teachings of the Prophet.

After an inspection of the various points of excavation and a word of
greeting here and there had been passed with upper workmen, those who
had showed an intelligent interest in their work, Freddy returned to
the exciting spot and with two or three men who had "fingers" and a
"sense" of things, began his morning's picking.

While he worked away with youthful energy and an almost inspired
intelligence, he could hear the toilers with the rubbish-baskets
singing their monotonous chants.  The word "Allah, Allah" came
repeatedly to his ears.  He had grown so accustomed to the words of
their chants that he followed them subconsciously; the words "Allah,
Lord of Kindness, Giver of Ease," rang out with monotonous persistence.
Allah was to ease their burdens; Allah was to moisten their dry lips;
the "Lord of the Worlds" was to hasten the time when the poor man might
sit in the shade and smell the sweet scents of paradise and listen to
the sound of running waters.

They chanted verses from the Koran as Jack Tars sing sea songs.  In
Mohammedan lands the song of Allah never dies.

Only occasionally Freddy heard the quaint words of some popular
love-song, coming from the lips of one of the higher-class Arab
workmen, a song as old as their tales of _The Thousand and One Nights_.
One was drifting to his half-conscious ears at the moment; he was
familiar with every word of it.

"A lover says to his dove, 'Send me your wings for a day.'  The dove
replied, 'The affair is vain.'  I said, 'Some other day, that I may
soar through the sky and see the face of the beloved; I shall obtain
love enough for a year and will return, O dove, in a day.'  The night!
The night!  O those sweet hands!  Gather of the dewy peach!  Whence
were ye, and whence were we, when ye ensnared us?"

The Arab who was singing it was considered quite a musician amongst his
fellow-workmen.  He had earned his living for some years by singing
love-songs on the small boats which drift up and down the Nile and in
the cafés in Luxor.  To English ears his talents as a singer would not
have been recognized; the particular qualities which ensured the
approval of his native audience would have caused much laughter in an
English music-hall.  Freddy Lampton, who knew something of Arab music,
was able to recognize the singer's talents, but he was not near enough
to hear the grunts of intense satisfaction and longing which the song
was calling forth from the blue-shirted _fellahin_.

And so the hours of the morning wore on, until the sun was too powerful
to allow even the natives to work, and Freddy Lampton wandered off to
the tomb in which his friend was painting.  The _fellahin_ instantly
untied the bundles which held their simple food and began their midday
meal.  Many of them prayed before eating; many of them did not.

When the meal was eaten, each man sought some vestige of shade, behind
a mound of rock or an ash-heap of debris, or in the excavated channels
of the site; there with full stomach and contented mind he would lay
himself down to sleep, amid the heap of ruins which thousands of years
ago had been the field of vast numbers of toilers, such as were he and
his fellow-toilers, slaving for the glorification of an absolute
monarch, whose kingdom was the civilized world.  He cared not one jot
nor tittle for what he had uncovered or what secrets the valley or
hills had hidden from men for countless centuries.  Filling baskets
full of rubbish was his work, his method of earning a living, and it
mattered nothing to him whether the rubbish was culled from the golden
sand of the most wonderful valley in the world, or thrown out of the
filthy ashbins in the native city of Cairo.  Toil was all one thing to
him; it had no interest, it suggested no varieties.  Allah had willed
it.  The clear blue sky and the sunlit hills, with their tombs and
tombs and endless tombs stretching further and further into the western
valley, they, too, were Allah's will, as were the dark, evil-smelling
streets of the city, with their noise and the crowding of human and
animal beasts of burden.

As Freddy approached Michael Amory a look of satisfaction spread over
his face.  "Mike," as he called him, was so busily engrossed in his
work that he did not look up.  He was making a delicate and
extraordinarily exact reproduction on paper of a figure of an Egyptian
King making offerings to an enthroned Osiris.  No other artist had ever
done the same work with his delicacy of touch and exactness of detail.
The picture on his easel looked as if he had cut a square block out of
the polished limestone which held the tinted relief of the King making
the offering to the god, and set it upon his easel.

Freddy was proud of Michael and not a little surprised at the rapidity
with which he had grasped the nature of his excavation work, which was
not only the opening up of fresh monuments for the pleasure of the
public, but the search after missing links and the verifying of
well-founded conjectures.  He knew that Michael had read a fair amount
of Egyptian history, that he had specialized in one period, and that he
had studied, in his own fashion, something of the mythology of ancient
Egypt, but he was quite unprepared for the "sense" of the more serious
part of the work which he had shown.

Besides which, Freddy knew more than Michael thought he did of the new
distraction which had disturbed his mind.

About once in ten days Freddy found it almost necessary to go to Assuan
or Luxor and there throw himself heart and soul into the festivities of
the foreign hotel society.  For one night and half a day he played
tennis and danced and was young again.  These periodical outings and
his private hobbies kept his mind and nerves well balanced.  At his age
it was scarcely healthy for a sport-loving, normal Englishman to spend
his days and nights all alone, in the silent valley in the hills, his
only companions the mummies of Pharaohs and the bones unearthed from
subterranean tombs.  But Freddy slept as happily and as soundly with
mummies in his room and ancient skulls below his bed as he did in the
modern, conventional bedroom of the big hotel at Assuan.

Michael had accompanied him to these dances, and Freddy had noticed
that on each occasion he was very much engrossed by the company of an
Englishwoman of whom he had heard a good deal that was ugly and
unpleasant.  He had long ago ceased to pay any attention to the
scandals which were related to him each season about the English and
American women who came to Egypt for the sake of the climate and for
its hotel-society--ugly stories, generally greatly exaggerated, but
often with a foundation of unsavoury truth in them.  The sands of Egypt
breed scandals as quickly as the climate degenerates the morals of
shallow-minded tourists.  But this woman Freddy knew to be as dangerous
as she was charming; and he also knew the enthusiastic nature of
Michael and how it was temperamental with him to place all women on
pedestals and worship them as pure, high beings, far above mere men.
Fallen idols never shattered his belief; they were simply forgotten.

Since Michael had met the beautiful Mrs. Mervill, Freddy had noticed
that he had fits of abstraction, and that instead of working overtime,
as was his habit, he was now as prompt as the _fellahin_ to "down
tools" at the precise moment.

Freddy "had no use" for the woman.  His practical mind had summed her
up at a glance.  But he was afraid that his friend might drift into a
very undesirable friendship with her.  She would enjoy his simplicity,
for he seemed to have been born without guile, while his intellectual
fascination was not to be denied.  Michael was generous, impetuous and
reckless.

"I'm not going to disturb you," Freddy said.  "We'll meet at lunch."

"Right-ho!" Michael said.  "I've almost finished."

"Looks as if you'd blown the thing on to the paper this time," Freddy
said.  "Gad, it's topping!"

Michael said nothing, but he glowed inwardly.  A word of enthusiastic
praise from Freddy was worth all his morning's toil in the breathless,
stuffy tomb-chamber of the Pharaoh whose embalmed remains it contained.

Freddy returned to his hut and flung himself down in a cane
lounge-chair in as cool a spot as he could find.  He picked up a French
novel and lit a cigarette.

Lying there, in his white flannels, reading _Marie Claire_, who would
have thought that he was one of the most able Egyptologists of the day,
of the younger school, or that he controlled so important a section of
the English School of Archaeology in Egypt?

Meanwhile the simple meal was being laid with a neatness and convention
which was a striking contrast to the wooden hut and scarcity of
furniture in the room.  The Arab who was setting the table was a
perfect parlourmaid, a product of Freddy's teaching.  The only thing
Freddy was proud of was his ability to train and make good servants.
Mohammed Ali's table-waiting really pleased him.  He thought Meg would
approve of him.  He was an intelligent lad and proud of his English
master, who seemed to think that telling a lie for the sake of being
polite or kind was really a sin.  In fact, the Effendi was very rarely
cross, except when Mohammed forgot and told a lie.  Sometimes it was
very hard to tell the truth when a lie would, he knew, make his master
happy.  While he set the table he felt his master's eyes were on him,
even though he was reading a love story which was so beautiful that he
had seen, or thought he had seen, tears in the eyes of Effendi Amory,
when he was reading it the night before.

Teddy was not finding the beautiful story of the Frenchwoman go
interesting as Mohammed Ali imagined.  He had allowed the days to pass,
with all their engrossing interest, without giving much thought to
Margaret's coming or what she would do with herself, or how her
presence would affect their daily life.

Now in a few hours she would be with them.  This was, in fact, his last
meal alone with Mike.  He had never bothered about the matter because
Meg was such a good sort and so jolly well able to amuse and look after
herself.  The days had just passed, and now she was coming, Meg, who
was his best friend in the whole world, Meg who in his eyes had the
mind of a boy and the sympathy of a woman.




CHAPTER II

At five o'clock Michael Amory, true to his word, was down at the ferry,
awaiting the arrival of Margaret Lampton.  The ferry-boat was pulling
across the Nile; he would soon be able to distinguish her.  In all
probability no other Englishwoman would be crossing to the western bank
of the river at so late an hour.  Tourists who came to visit the
Colossi of Memnon, whose song to the dawn never dies, or to "do" the
ruins of the Hundred-Gated city of Thebes, came much earlier in the day.

While the boat was drifting slowly across, Michael's eyes rested
lovingly on his surroundings.  If the girl was appreciative of Nile
scenery, how greatly it must be impressing her!

Boats, like white birds with big crossed wings, flew past him on the
pale blue river.  Heavy, flat-bottomed barges, coming up from the
pottery factories, laden with jars which were to be used for the
building of native houses, drifted past, with their well-stacked,
squarely-built cargoes piled high like stacks of grain.  One barge,
with a wide brown sail, was full of fresh green melons.  Across the
river, on the opposite bank, bands of women, enveloped in black and
walking in Indian file on the yellow sands, carrying water-jars on
their heads, were wending their way to their mud villages.  The gleam
of their metal anklets caught the sunlight.

But the ferry-boat was drawing close to the bank; the next minute he
would be able to distinguish Freddy's sister, with Abdul in attendance.
The other passengers, with native politeness, were already making way
for the English Sitt and her servant to go ashore.

Michael hurried forward to greet her.  Margaret's blue veil hid her
features until he was quite close to her.

"I'm Michael Amory, I live with your brother," Michael said.  "I have
come to bring you to his camp.  He was too busy, or he would have been
here himself--he asked me to apologize to you."

Margaret's long firm fingers gave Michael's outstretched hand a
grateful grasp.  Michael, whose sensibilities were very near the
surface, lost nothing of the girl's meaning.  A feeling of relief
soothed his anxiety.

"How awfully kind of you to come!" she said.  "I knew Freddy would be
busy, digging up something that was once somebody, four thousand years
ago."

"That's about it," Michael said.  "As I could be spared and he
couldn't, he asked me to look to your arrival and bring you to the
camp."

Abdul had hurried on to see that the donkeys were properly harnessed
and all in good order for the long ride across the plain and through
the immortal valley.

"Are you excavating too?" Margaret asked.

"I'm allowed to do a little 'picking' under your brother's eyes, but my
real job is painting.  I'm only dabbling in archaeology as yet."

"Painting in connection with his School of Excavation?"

"Yes.  Sometimes it is necessary to make almost instant copies of the
excavated paintings, while the colours are fresh and the text legible."

"Isn't it all awfully interesting?" the girl asked.  "I feel almost
afraid to come in amongst you, for I know literally nothing about
Egyptology.  I've only once been in the Egyptian section of the British
Museum, and that's the sum total of my knowledge."

"You will have to learn.  Your brother put a huge tome of Maspero's
_The Dawn of Civilization_ in your room this morning; he means you to
start right away."

"Good old Freddy!" Margaret said, and as she smiled, Michael for the
first time saw her likeness to her brother; it had escaped him before,
because Freddy was very fair and Margaret was duskily dark.  He could
see that even through her blue veil.  When she smiled and showed the
same sharp-looking, well-formed teeth, as white as porcelain, Michael
knew that if the girl had only been fair instead of dark, she would be
almost the exact duplicate of her brother.  But the expression of her
grey-brown eyes was different; they were steadfast, calm eyes, which
moved more slowly; they were softer than her brother's.

This Michael could scarcely see, screened as she was by her veil.  But
her firm handshake and the long unflinching gaze of her "How do you
do?" told him why Freddy always spoke of his sister in tones which
implied that she was as reliable as a man and a "topping pal."

They had reached the spot where the donkeys were waiting for them.
Margaret's was a fine, well-bred animal, called Sappho, with a skin as
smooth as a white suede glove; it stood almost as high as a mule.  Her
saddle, too, was a new one, and well-fitting--Freddy had seen to that.
The old Sheikh, who was turbanned and robed after the manner of Moses
or Aaron, was presented to her.  His pale grey camel was waiting for
him at a little distance from the donkeys.  It looked very dignified,
with its white sheepskin flung over the saddle and its fine assortment
of charms.  Little tufts of thick hair had been left on its thighs and
at its knees and neck; the artist who had clipped it had evidently
admired the fancy shaving of some resplendent French poodle.

Margaret felt oddly important and very shy.  Such a cavalcade seemed to
have come to meet her.  Her attempt at polite rejoinders to the old
Sheikh's graceful and flattering speeches of welcome had all to be
passed through Abdul, and probably delivered them in a more gracious
form than Margaret was capable of expressing them.  Abdul was quite
accustomed to the abrupt and mannerless ways of the foreigners and to
their crude speech; he knew that it meant no offence nor indicated any
lack of gratitude or graciousness.

The Sheikh expressed his willingness to put his camel at Margaret's
disposal, but as her brother had told him that the honourable Sitt
would probably prefer to ride a donkey, all he could do was to again
assure her that it would bestow honour on him if she would ride it, or
in the future make use of it whenever she felt disposed.  That is what
Margaret made out of the endless, elaborate speeches which were
translated to her.

At last they were all mounted and on their way.  Margaret found it very
difficult to keep up any sort of conversation with her companions, for
her boy, anxious to do honour to his mistress's donkey, kept Sappho
well ahead of Michael Amory's mule.  She had only been one week in
Egypt, so everything which she passed was still an object of interest
and curiosity, but fortunately almost everything explained itself to
her, like the illustrations of a book of the Old Testament.

They had turned their backs on the river, with its boats and birds and
beasts and drum-beating and yelling _fellahin_, and were now in the
silence of the green plain, where the blue-shirted _fellahin_ were
working knee-deep in the new crops.  The inundation was just over, and
the banks of the Nile were as bright as two long velvet ribbons of
emerald green.

And now they were off the plain and had passed the Temple of Kurneh and
the little Coptic village, which was the last link with civilization
until their long ride up the valley terminated in the Excavation Camp.

In the valley they rode side by side, for the donkey-boy's enthusiasm
had distinctly abated.  Margaret did not know anything about the
valley, beyond the fact that it was called the Valley of the Tombs of
the Kings.  She had not yet "done" any tombs, as she had not come up
the Nile by boat--it was cheaper and quicker for her to do the journey
from Cairo to Luxor by train.  So far she had not been in the hands of
Cook.  Freddy had told her that the money she would have to spend on
the steamer she could spend better later on, and she would be more able
to appreciate the tombs and temples, which most tourists see when they
know too little about things Egyptian to appreciate them.

Knowing nothing of the story of the great valley, it was interesting to
Michael to watch the effect it had on the girl--an extraordinary
silence and its atmosphere of profound mystery.  Their attempt to talk
to each other soon failed, for Margaret was no good at either banter or
small talk.

For the time being the valley, with its barren cliffs rising higher and
higher on each side of her, and its world of soft pink light, held her.
The wide cliff-bound road, which wound its way like a white thread
through a maze of light and sun-pink hills, seemed to be leading her
further and further into the heart of Egypt, to the very bosom of her
children's ancient kingdom.

Margaret was totally ignorant of the fact that the tombs which give the
valley its modern name lay in all their desolate splendour in the
bowels of the earth, under the cliffs on either side of her.  Her sense
of the valley was not mental, it was not derived from books or a
knowledge of Egypt's history.

Why it so affected her she could not imagine.  It did not depress her
so much as it awed her.  The light on the hills was the light of
happiness, and the blueness of the clear sky banished all idea of
sadness which a valley called the Valley of Tombs might have suggested.
Yet it did affect her so profoundly that she accepted the idea that in
entering this valley of desolation she was entering on a new phase of
her existence.  She felt suddenly older and wiser and strangely
apprehensive.

The Sheikh, on his swaying camel, riding on ahead, the donkey-boys,
with their fleet limbs and blue shirts clinging to them as they ran,
were becoming immortal in her memory.  Years would never efface the
picture.  Only Michael Amory and herself, in their European clothes,
had no place in it.  They were intruders.

Not a bird crossed their path, not a falcon circled over the tops of
the cliffs.  On the Nile thousands of birds had looked black against
the sunlight as they came to the great river to drink.

"Why does this valley, with its pink sunlight, make talking out of the
question?" Margaret at last said.  "Please forgive me if I am a very
poor companion."

Michael, who had been glad that she had not spoken--he would not have
liked her so well if she had--said, "Please don't feel compelled to
talk.  I came to help you if you needed help, not to bother you or
spoil your enjoyment."

"Thank you," she said.  "I simply couldn't talk.  Does one enjoy
Egypt?" she asked the question pertinently.

They rode on in silence again and Michael was pleased that
temperamentally she seemed to "feel" Egypt.  There had been no
suggestion of psychic influence in her very evident acceptance of the
power of Egypt--just a simple awe, which was to Michael absolutely
natural.

Presently she said, "Does my brother live all alone in this valley?"

"Practically alone, for some months in each year.  I am with him just
now, and in the daytime there are the workmen.  At night he is alone
with his two Sudanese house-servants; but he is well protected--his
watch-dogs sit round his hut and nothing human would dare venture near
them after dark."

Margaret tried to laugh.  "Dogs!" she said.  "Dogs couldn't keep off
this"--she indicated the valley.

Michael knew what she meant.  Not a green blade of grass, not the
smallest patch of herb was visible.  To Margaret they seemed to be
floating rather than riding through the pink light of another world.

"No, not this," Michael said.  "But your brother's a marvel.  I
couldn't do it.  Yet even he has to leave it now and then; sometimes he
spends a night in frivolling in Luxor or Assuan."

As the vision of Luxor hotels, with their company of
fashionably-clothed and overfed tourists, rose up before the girl, she
laughed more naturally.  But in the valley her laughter sounded wrong;
she quickly hushed it.

"Fancy Luxor hotels after this!  It certainly is going to
extremes--personally, their society would bore me, but I should think
that it was good for Freddy."

"Quite necessary," Michael said.  "And he's awfully popular at the
dances.  I often wonder what some of his partners would say if they
could see him as I do, pick in hand, down in the bowels of the earth or
under the blazing sun of the desert, for days and days on end!  Your
brother's quite wonderful."

"I'm longing to see him at work," Margaret said.  "I think his life
sounds most exciting and interesting."

"Don't expect too much--it is amazingly interesting, but we don't open
a tomb of Queen Thi every day."

"What tomb was that?  Something very special?"

"Yes, very."  Michael said the words very simply, but it struck him as
odd that Freddy's sister should never have even heard of the tomb of
Queen Thi.  "At the present time he has just unearthed a small
staircase in the sand and a bit of a brick wall, which may lead to the
tomb he is looking for, or they may end in nothing, for sometimes the
ancient tomb-builders began to dig and work upon a tomb and eventually
abandoned the site as hopeless--the sand was too soft, which meant the
constant falling of sand before they struck a foundation of rock, or
for some other reason--so after days and days of excavating we find
that the whole thing is a fraud, just the mere beginning of a tomb
which was never finished.  Then other times he finds a tomb and after
endless work at it--you can't imagine how much work it entails--he
discovers that it was robbed of every single thing of value, probably
by the sexton who was in charge of it when it was first built--all the
jewels and scarabs and things had been looted; probably they were
stolen only a few weeks after the mummy was laid in it."

Margaret remained silent.  She was thinking and thinking, new and
bewildering thoughts were rushing through her mind Before she could in
the least appreciate this new life what a lot she had to learn!

"An excavator's life isn't a bed of roses--it doesn't consist picking
up jewels and mummy-beads and beautiful amulets and rare scarabs and
valuable parchments in every tomb which is opened.  It's hard, hard
work, with any amount of boring, minute detail and scientific work
attached to it."

Margaret thought for a moment.  To speak at all upon a subject of which
she knew absolutely nothing was not in her nature.

"Shall we pass any tombs?  Where are they?"  She had expected to see
some ruins of fallen buildings, or monuments which resembled the tombs
in "The Street of Tombs" at Athens--these were familiar to her from
photographs.  Here there was absolutely nothing, nothing to suggest
that great tombs had ever been there.

"They are below us," Michael said, "and all around us, under these pink
rocks, buried like coal-mines.  Where your brother is digging just now
the site is rather different--it is flatter and less beautiful; it is
in a small side valley.  They were terribly anxious to hide themselves,
poor things, to get away from robbers."

"Oh, I'm so glad I came!" Margaret said, irrelevantly, and the deep
sigh she gave terminated their conversation.

Michael knew quite well the nature of her thoughts and the turbulent
fight for expression which they must be causing her.  No creature as
sensitively attuned as he judged her to be could journey for the first
time unmoved through the valley which to him summed up the word Egypt.
He allowed her to ride a few paces ahead, just behind the Sheikh.  The
camel's arrogant head, with its supercilious gaze, towered above them.
To Margaret, Michael Amory and herself were still an offence in the
valley.  The camel, with the high-seated, turbaned Sheikh, seemed a
part of the whole.  The animal, with its prehistoric loneliness of
expression, the Sheikh, with his splendid deportment and benign
loftiness of manner, suited the dignity of their surroundings.  The
camel's gaze, as its head reached up higher and higher to view some
object which interested its supercilious mind, made Margaret feel very
small and vulgarly modern.  She was glad that she was riding a humble
ass.  The way the Sheikh rode his haughty animal provoked her
admiration; it was to her after the manner in which the British
aristocracy treat their powdered and silk-stockinged menservants.

Margaret felt more at ease on her white donkey, just as she felt more
at ease with pleasant English maidservants than with pompous powdered
footmen.  It was a ridiculous simile, but it is the ridiculous which
invades the mind in sublime moments.

While Margaret was finding pleasure in watching the camel and the
Sheikh, or rather, while they were taking their place in her mind with
the air and the sky and the hills and the valley, Michael was certainly
enjoying himself in a more definite criticism of Freddy's sister.  He
remembered his friend's remark, "Oh, Meg's all right," and he knew what
he meant.

Her long limbs and boyish figure delighted his artistic eye, while the
white topee hat, with the long blue veil, failed to hide the attractive
carriage of her head.  He felt impatient to see her unhatted and
unveiled.  Certainly she was not dowdy, nor had she any aggressive
cleverness about her.  Indeed, there was something which suggested a
man's directness of mind and a simplicity which was quite unusual and
fascinating.  He could almost have laughed aloud when he thought of the
picture which he had conjured up to himself of the Meg who could
"tackle pretty stiff stuff and suck the guts out of a book like a
weasel sucking the blood out of a rabbit."

The dowdy "blue stocking" had vanished, and in her place was a girl as
attractive in her darkness as Freddy was in his fairness.

And so they rode on and on through the Theban hills, bathed in pink
sunlight.  The donkey-boys had fallen behind.  Their first enthusiastic
effort to show off before the honourable Sitt had quite subsided.  They
were discussing her now, in none too delicate a fashion.  The elder of
the two boys, who was the son of a dragoman, and hoped one day to
develop into as resplendent a being as his father, was in his way a
great reader.  He had just finished an Arabic translation of a French
novel and he was picturing to his friends Margaret as the heroine of
the obscene romance.  Poor Margaret!

In Egypt the Arabic translations of low-class French romances, rendered
even more unclean by their translation, have a poisonous effect upon
the minds of the youths who devour them.  Margaret, who had admired the
boy's brilliant smiles and beautiful features and teeth, which were
even whiter and more attractive than her brother's, little dreamed, as
they tell behind and talked together, of the nature of their
conversation.

Their blue shirts looked like turquoise in the sunlight, and their
little white crochet skull-caps showed to advantage the fine outline of
their dark heads.  They were certainly handsome young rascals, with an
inherited grace of manner.

How her clean, healthy mind would have abhorred and hated them if she
had understood their ceaseless chatter!  It was like the noise of
starlings on a spring morning.  In Egypt, where ignorance is bliss, it
is certainly folly to be wise.  In the East, the inquiring mind,
especially in domestic matters, is often its own enemy.

To Margaret, Egypt held for the time being nothing which was unclean or
unlovely, nothing which was bettered by ignorance.  She was lost in its
light and mystery.  In the Theban valley it seemed as if she would live
on light, that it would supply food for both soul and body.  In Egypt
God is made manifest in the sun.




CHAPTER III

Margaret had been shown over the "estate"; her modest luggage had been
deposited in her bedroom, in which she was now standing, with her arm
linked in her brother's.

When she had approved of everything and had told him about her journey,
she gave his arm a little hug.

"Oh, Freddy, it's good to be with you again!  You were a brick to let
me come."

Freddy slid his arm round her shoulders and pressed her closer to him.

"It's topping having you, old girl, but you mustn't mind if I leave you
an awful lot alone--I can't help it."

"I know you can't, and if I stew up a bit, you may find work which I
can do.  I'd love to help."

"Oh, don't fear--I'll find lots for you to do."

She looked at him eagerly, with a touching humility.  "What sort of
work?"

"Cleaning and sorting out the small finds which the workmen bring in
each night, and you could help Mike to do some copying--it's not
difficult, and sometimes the colours vanish when they are exposed to
the light.  He can't get the things done all at one time."

"I see," Margaret said, but in her mind there was a horrible jumble.

"Sometimes I want Mike to help me--we're awfully short of hands just
now--I mean, for hands that you can absolutely trust, so if you get
into the thing you could do some of Mike's work and let him off."

"I'd love to, and you know my capability as well as anyone, so if you
think I could I'll do my best."

"You'll soon know as much as Mike did when he came here, and your
painting's all right."

"How nice Mike is!" she said simply.

"He's one of the best."

"Is he going to make Egyptology his profession?"

"I don't know--I don't think so.  I'm afraid it's just another bit of
Mike's drifting."

"What a pity!"  Margaret was practical.

"I tell him it's time lost--at his age he ought to be at the job he
means to succeed in."

"Isn't he taking this up in earnest?  He seems to love the life."

"He does love the thing, but the detail of the work, with all its
exactitude and rules and regulations, bores him.  You'll understand
better later on."  Freddy opened a copy of the annual report of the
British School of Archaeology in Egypt and pointed to pages and pages
of written records, outline drawings, measurements and diagrams and
plans of tombs and excavations, even accurate copies of small pieces of
broken vases and plates and jars--almost everything which had been dug
up was carefully recorded; nothing seemed too small or incomplete to be
of value.

Margaret looked at it wonderingly.  What was all the labour for?  Some
day would she, too, understand the meaning of it and the use of such
scraps and atoms of ancient pottery?  Freddy digging out beautiful
objects for the British Museum, statues and scarabs, wonderful jewels
and necklaces of mummy-beads, was what she had visualized, but of all
this she had never dreamed.

She put her finger on the outline drawing of a small fragment of
pottery with the tracing of a tiny sprig of some plant on it.  Her eyes
said "What good can that be?"

Freddy read her meaning.  "That small piece of pottery may have shown
that foreign vegetation was introduced into the district.  It is a new
leaf, not met with before.  It was probably sent for identification to
the Botanical Department of University College in London.  Sometimes
little things like that give rise to heated discussions and theories.
Some excavators won't draw on their imagination--they will have nothing
but hard facts; others start a theory which sounds far-fetched--often
it comes out correct."

"Realistic and Imaginative Schools!"

"That's about it.  The middle way is generally the soundest.  The
excavator without imagination never gets very far, whereas the man who
is apt to let his imagination run wild gets on the wrong track and it's
hard to get him off; he overlooks things that won't fit in with his
theory."

"I had no idea archaeology involved all this--you're awfully clever,
old boy."

"It's unending work and extraordinarily far-reaching, as it's done
to-day.  In the early days the horrors that were committed in the way
of excavating were too awful."

"You work like detectives now, it seems to me, following up the
smallest threads and links."

"That's it," Freddy said.  "We are just a body of intellectual
detectives, running to earth the history of Egypt and the story of the
ancient world.  We're really far more interested in finding connecting
links and establishing disputed facts, than in unearthing statues and
figures which please the public.  Egyptologists have unearthed the
private lives of Egypt's kings and queens."

"I suppose your friend Mike only enters into the artistic side of it?"

"Not altogether--he's awfully keen about Egyptian history and
mythology, but he hates detail too much to give his mind and time to
all the hard grind of the thing--he likes to study the history we
unearth."

"I'm afraid I shall be like him.  I want to enjoy the results without
the dull labour of digging."

"It's a sort of thing that's born in you, I think."

"You love it, Freddy?"

"Rather!  I couldn't stick any other work now."

"You're looking awfully well."

"Never felt fitter."

"The skulls and mummies under your bed haven't done you any harm.  Poor
aunt Anna, how she dreads them!  She always imagines that everything
Egyptian has the most malign powers.  She's sure some mummy will take
its revenge on you for disturbing it."

"Poor old Anna!  I suppose she thinks we are the first people who ever
thought of disturbing these tombs!  She little knows how rare a thing
it is to come across one which was not robbed thousands of years ago of
all that was worth having.  If Egyptian amulets and mummies had such
terrible powers, you may be very sure that the modern Arabs, who are
the most superstitious people in the world, would not touch the work,
and the ancient sextons or guardians of the tombs, who were even more
superstitious, wouldn't have dared to disturb the last slumber of a
lately-buried Pharaoh.  They plundered and sacked the tomb just as soon
as ever they could.  The tombs were first built up in this valley with
the hopes of hiding them; they were built here to get away from the
wretches who plundered the cemeteries on the plains.  I suppose the
Pharaohs who were having their tombs built hadn't discovered that the
other tombs had been robbed by the very guardians who were set to watch
them.  It was left for us to discover that."

"Was that so?  It certainly does not look like a valley of tombs."

"They were hidden with all the cunning which the Eastern mind could
devise, and yet most of them have been robbed."

They had left the house and were sitting on lounge chairs in the front
of the hut.  There was a beautiful moon and a sky full of stars, such
as Margaret had never seen before.

"Come on, Mike!" Freddy called out.  "Don't make yourself scarce.  Meg
and I don't want to discuss family secrets.  Her first night in the
valley is going to be the real thing--no intrusion of family
skeletons--they can wait."

"Our family skeletons would feel themselves very out of place here,"
Margaret said as Michael Amory appeared.

Michael sat down beside her and very soon all three were talking about
topics of general interest.  Meg gave them the latest London gossip,
which at the time was very dominated by the unrest in Ireland and the
Ulster scandals.

Michael, who had on one side of his family Irish blood and strong Irish
sentiments, did not voice his opinions.  He listened to all that
Margaret had to tell her brother, news principally gathered from
friends living in Ulster and from the violently anti-Nationalist press.
There certainly seemed exciting times in Ireland and Margaret's talk
was unprejudiced and interesting.

While they were talking Mike was able to enjoy the girl's beauty and
study her individuality.  Pretty as she was--and more than pretty--it
was her personality which pleased him--the bigness of her nature, the
evidence of her wide-mindedness and her quick grasp of fresh subjects,
and above all, in her, as in Freddy, there was the ring of
unquestionable honour and clean-mindedness.

Margaret under the Eastern moonlight was charming.  Her brown hair was
so soft and thick that Mike would have liked to put his hand through
it, as he saw her do every now and then.  Most women, he knew, were shy
of disturbing their hair, however naturally arranged it might seem.
Margaret, when anything excited her, had a trick of putting her long
fingers through her hair, upwards from her forehead, and letting it
fall down again as it felt inclined.  Her nicety of dress, too, pleased
her critical inspector.  It was fastidiously simple and fastidiously
worn.  In this again she was one with her brother.

When English news had been discussed, their talk turned again to Egypt.
Margaret greatly desired to study Arabic; but although her brother
could speak it extremely well, she knew that he had no time to teach
her.  It amazed her how much he had had to learn and had learned during
his years in Egypt.  It was after twelve o'clock when the trio parted
for the night.

When Meg was alone in her room, a certain reaction set in; she felt
tired and just a little depressed.  She wanted to do so much and she
knew so little.  Beyond the name Rameses she had not recognized the
name of one of the kings her brother had mentioned during their
conversation that evening--indeed, she had failed to grasp the meaning
of almost everything he had said, and yet she knew that he was talking
down to her level, or thought he was.

Bewildered with the sense of Egypt, she fell asleep and dreamed of the
valley and her wonderful ride.




CHAPTER IV

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 in _The Arabian Nights_.




CHAPTER V

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 other
Pharaoh 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 while
Margaret 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 of
Akhnaton, 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's _Dawn 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's _Akhnaton_, Pharaoh of Egypt.




CHAPTER VI

The next day Freddy announced at breakfast, which was a typically
English meal--except for the excellence of the coffee--that there was
to be a very extra-special ball the next night at the Cataract Hotel at
Assuan.

"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 the
_Egyptian 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.  Poor
Akhnaton!"

"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
the _gaphir's_ about 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.




CHAPTER VII

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 no _arričre pensée_ in
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 the _darabukkeh_ below 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.  But
I 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 _'ood_ or 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--really
I 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.

"Egypt to-night," she said, "for me means a big ball and gay dresses.
I have lost the other sense of Egypt."  She turned up her eyes to the
heavens.  "Except for the heavens," she said, "I really might have been
at the Carlton Hotel in London, at an Egyptian fęte held there, or
something of the kind."

"As you said, Egypt has so many souls, but its heavens have only one.
The best starlight night at home is a poor, poor affair compared to
this."

Before he had finished speaking Freddy appeared and claimed Margaret
for a dance.  She left Michael almost gladly, yet hating the feeling
that they were still as far apart as they had been when they sat down
to supper.

What a strange night it had been!  The one half pure joy and the other
certainly not happiness.

Alone in the open space in front of the hotel, Michael stood and cursed
his own weakness.  Why had he stooped to those lips?  Why had he
allowed himself to be unworthy of his intimacy with Margaret?  He was
sorry for Mrs. Mervill, for he believed her stories about her husband's
drunkenness and degrading habits, as he almost believed that she had
for some strange reason fallen in love with himself.  He wished with
all his might that women were nicer to one another, so that one of
them, a woman like Margaret, for instance, might have given this
lonely, lovely creature the affection and intimate friendship she
craved for.  Women shunned her and so she had to resort to men for the
companionship and also for the affection she needed.

Michael understood very well the pleasures of sympathetic friendships;
he was conscious that to himself human sympathy meant a very great
deal, and so he felt sincerely sorry for the woman who was denied it.
He liked the quiet places of the untrodden world; cities had no charm
for him.  But he needed human sympathy in his solitude to make his
enjoyment complete.  He felt sorely annoyed with the fates which made
it impossible for him to give Mrs. Mervill all that she asked of him
and at the same time continue on the footing on which he had been with
Margaret.

And how was it that he could not?  How was it that Margaret had
instantly divined that there was more than an ordinary or desirable
intimacy between Mrs. Mervill and himself?  How was it that he had felt
dishonoured and ashamed?

He had to return to the ball-room to find his partner for the next
dance.  As he did so, he passed Mrs. Mervill, who was coming out of it.
She looked at him with laughing eyes, a soft, beautiful creature, of
supple movements, whose perfect lips had told him the promises which
she was capable of fulfilling.  If he had not known Margaret, what
would he have done?

But Margaret held him.  He knew that she was worth a thousand Mrs.
Mervills, in spite of the latter's more vivid beauty and her quick wit.
For Mrs. Mervill was clever and could be extremely witty and amusing
when she liked.  Her daring tongue stopped at very little, but it had
the gift of suggestion, which always saved her stories or repartees
from indelicacy or vulgarity.

Margaret, who had offered him nothing but friendship, stood out in his
mind as one of the women with whom it was a privilege for any man to be
on intimate terms.  In his thoughts of her, Margaret was high and
strong and pure.  When his mind dwelt on her, it soared; when it dwelt
on Mrs. Mervill, it grovelled.  He did not wish to grovel; it was not
in his nature to do so; it took a woman such as Mrs. Mervill to bring
his lower self to the surface.  He hated himself for even unconsciously
condemning her and he tried always to remember her charming moods, the
hours they had spent together when they first met on the gay
pleasure-boats on the Nile.  Those were the days when the clever woman
hid from the man whom she had selected her baser nature.  During those
guarded days she had been gay and amusing and apparently as innocent as
a schoolgirl.  It was only after a considerable number of meetings and
many exchanges of thought had passed between them, that she began to
show her hand, or dared to convey to him in a hundred insinuating ways
and expressions the real nature of her feelings for him.  Very
grudgingly and very reluctantly Michael had to admit to himself that
she had fallen in his estimation, that he would not be sorry if they
were never to meet again.  Yet he was not strong enough to cut himself
off from her; her appeal to his pity stood in his way.

He had never met any woman before in the least like her.  Her fearless
audacity had at first, just at first, somewhat amused, as it amazed
him.  He had scarcely credited its being genuine.  As she owed nothing
to her husband, or so she said, she saw no reason why she should not
live the life of a wealthy bachelor, who enjoyed it to the full.  What
was sauce for the gander was sauce for the goose.

To gain any hold on Michael's affections, she had recognized that she
must go carefully.  It was her role to let him think that her passion
for him was a totally new thing in her life, that she had at last found
the man who could help her to be the woman she longed to be.  With her
knowledge of man-kind, she knew how to awaken and keep alive in Michael
the only element in his character upon which she could work, the very
element he strove to banish and subdue.

Later on in the evening she sought him out, because she had discovered
that Margaret Lampton was living in her brother's camp and that she was
in daily companionship with Michael.  Freddy had told her this to anger
her.  He was proud of his sister's beauty and pleased that Mrs. Mervill
had seen her admired.

"Michael," Mrs. Mervill said, "that dark girl is in love with you.  She
hates me."

"Don't talk nonsense!" Michael said.  "Why will you spoil our
interesting conversation by reverting to a forbidden topic?"

They had been talking intellectually and seriously for quite half an
hour.  Mrs. Mervill was a great reader, and she had determined to place
herself in a position to talk intelligently, if not learnedly, to
Michael about things Egyptian.  She had been reading what Ebers had to
say about the tragedy of Isis and Osiris being the foundation of many
latter-day Egyptian romances.  It had even found its way into _The
Thousand and One Nights_.

Mrs. Mervill was much more word-fluent than Margaret.  Often her
imagery was charming.

"Because it fills my heart, Michael.  It is the background of
everything.  I saw the birth of hatred in her eyes--she has never hated
before."

"I don't think she knows what hate means," he said, "and I wish you
would leave her alone."

"I have not spoken about her before."

"You said she would be fat and coarse at forty."

Millicent Mervill caught his hands in hers.  "You dear silly boy, so
she will, both fat and complacent, but then I shall be thin and
shrewish and shrivelled."

Michael laughed.  "You are a tease!" he said good-naturedly.

"'The Rogue in Porcelain' used to be my name at school.  But tell
me--how long is that dark-haired girl going to stay with her brother?"

"I don't know," Michael said.  "If she doesn't feel the heat, perhaps
until he returns to England and the camp breaks up."

Mrs. Mervill clenched her pretty teeth.  "And you expect me to be good
and quiet and submissive and stay here?"

"I want you to be reasonable."

"That's out of the question--I very seldom am, and I am not going to be
to please Miss Lampton, I can tell you!"

"Then what are you going to do?"  He could not be hard on the woman for
loving him; he wished he could help her and induce her to be
reasonable.  If she had been free, he would have felt himself bound to
marry her.

"I will arrange something," she said.  "I don't know what."

"What sort of thing?" he said.  "Nothing foolish!  Do look at things
dispassionately."

"I won't!" she said.  Her face was upraised to the stars.  "I won't
give you up to that dark-haired girl."

He swung round and spoke roughly.  "Don't you know I can't be yours,
and you can't be mine?"

"And you want me not to be a dog in the manger, while you enjoy the
next best thing that comes along!"

"I never said so.  Your mind jumps at conclusions.  I hate such ideas
and conversation.  I wish you would stop it."

"I will be worse than a dog in the manger," she said, "if you make love
to that girl in the desert."

"Hush!" Michael cried.  His grasp of her wrist hurt her.  "Hush!  You
will make me hate you."

"No, you won't, Michael," she said, "because you have kissed me.  Words
were made to hide our feelings, kisses to reveal them."  She suddenly
paused and looked as sad and innocent as a corrected child.  "I would
be a saint, if you would let yourself love me, Michael."

"What would be the good?" he said.  "You belong to some one else."

"A nice sort of belonging!" she said, disconsolately.  "He doesn't care
a scrap what becomes of me."

"Can't you possibly divorce him?"  Michael did not mean that he would
marry her if she did; his mind was groping for some solution of the
problem.

Millicent Mervill remained silent.  "I could let him divorce me," she
said at last.

"Don't!" Michael said intuitively.  His voice amused the woman.

"I don't mean to," she said.  "Why should any woman be divorced because
she lives the same life as her husband does when he is apart from her?"

"You don't, and aren't going to," Michael said earnestly.

"I would, Michael, with you--only with you."

"I wish you could have been friends with Miss Lampton instead of hating
her," he said sadly.

"Pouf!" Millicent Mervill cried.  "Thanks for your Miss Lampton--I can
do without her friendship!  I prefer hating her."

"You are so perverse and foolish and . . ."  Michael paused ". . . and
difficult."

"No, loving, you mean, loving, Michael--that's all I'm difficult about."




CHAPTER VIII

They were back in the valley again and splendid work was going on at
the camp.  Another two weeks' hard digging had done wonders, and
Margaret and Michael had found each other again.

In the dawn, two mornings after the dance, when the mysterious figures,
heralding the light, were abandoning themselves to their God on the
desert sands, Mike had seen Margaret standing at her hut-door,
watching, as he himself so often watched, for the glory which was of
Aton to flood the desert with light.  Meg's eyes the day before had
told Michael that she was unhappy; he knew now that she had not slept.

While the white figures were still bent earthwards and the little
streak of light was scarcely more than visible, Michael went to her and
asked her forgiveness.

"Forgive me," he said.  "I need forgiveness."

Meg took his hand.  "I hate not being friends.  Thank you."

"It made me miserable," he said.

"Then let's forget.  I was stupid.  This is all too big and great for
such smallness."  She indicated the coming of the unearthly light.

"Thy dawning, O Aton," Michael said.

Margaret smiled.  "He was very far from us at Assuan."

"He was there.  I stifled my consciousness of him, Meg."

"Don't," she said.  "Let's go forward."

"I know what you mean," he said.  "Regrets are weak, foolish."

"I don't want to bring the hotel at Assuan into this valley.  Let's
just watch the sun transform its infinite mystery into our waking,
working, everyday world--if Egypt can be an everyday world."

"May I say Akhnaton's beautiful hymn to you?  It is about the sunrise.
He must often have seen it just as we are seeing it now."

"Akhnaton's?  Yes, do.  How wonderful to think that he wrote hymns!"

Michael began the famous hymn.  "'The world is in darkness, like the
dead.  Every lion cometh forth from his den; all serpents sting.
Darkness reigns.'"

"We might substitute jackals," Margaret said gently.

"'When thou risest in the horizon . . . the darkness is banished.  Then
in all the world they do their work.

"'All trees and plants flourish, the birds flutter in their marshes,
all sheep dance upon their feet.'"

"Oh," Margaret said delightedly, "how like it is to the hundred and
fourth Psalm!  Do you remember how David said: 'The trees of the Lord
are full of sap. . . .  Where the birds make their nests. . . .  The
high hills are a refuge for the wild goats'?  I think that's how it
goes.  I love that Psalm."

"Yes," Michael said, "verse for verse, the idea is absolutely similar
and the similes are strikingly alike.  The next verse is just as much
alike.  Listen. . . .  I am so glad you like it."

"First look," Margaret said, "at that light.  Yes, now go on--I love
hearing it."

"'The ships sail up stream and down stream alike.  The fish in the
river leap up before Thee and Thy rays are in the midst of the great
sea.  How manifold are Thy works.  Thou didst create the earth
according to Thy desire, men, all cattle, all that are upon the earth.'"

"How extraordinarily like!" Margaret said.  "How do you account for it?
I suppose it is still allowed that David wrote the Psalms?  Did he live
before Akhnaton or after him?"  She laughed softly.  "Don't scorn my
ignorance.  You see, I have kept my promise--I have read nothing at all
on the subject."

"Akhnaton, you mean?  Oh, before David, by about three hundred years.
There are all sorts of theories on the subject.  The commonest is that
Akhnaton, having come of Syrian stock, on his mother's side, may have
got his inspiration from some Syrian hymn, as David also may have done.
I reject that theory.  The whole of Akhnaton's beliefs and teachings
prove the extraordinary originality of his ideas.  He borrowed nothing;
God was his inspiration."

"You are going to tell me about him, about his work?"

"Yes, soon, some day.  Have you thought about him since?"  Michael
referred to the God of Whom Akhnaton was the manifestation, the
interpreter.  He always spoke of Akhnaton as a divine messenger.

His voice betrayed a sense of regret, of unworthiness.  Yet in his
heart he knew that, weak as he had been, he had not sinned against the
spirit of Akhnaton, that he realized even more fully his watchword,
"Living in Truth."  Akhnaton's love for every created being because of
their creator filled Michael's heart even more fully than it had done
before.  He had learned his own moral weakness, his own forgetfulness.
Blame and criticism of even the natives' shortcomings seemed to him
reserved for someone more worthy than himself.  They had simply not yet
seen the Light; their evolution was more tardy; they were less
fortunate.  Some day all men would be "Living in Truth."  Akhnaton's
dream would be realized.  How impossible it is for our material selves
to do without the help which is outside ourselves, that help which is
our divine consciousness, Michael had learned over and over again.  His
lapses had not affected his beliefs.  They were only parts of the
struggle, the oldest struggle known to mankind, the struggle between
Light and Darkness.  Just as the Egyptians from the earliest days
believed in the triumph of Osiris over Set, he knew that no thinking
man could doubt the eventual triumph of all those who fight for the
spiritual man.

"Yes, I have thought about him," Margaret said.  "And last night I
dreamed about him--my . . ." she paused ". . . wonderful visitor."

"What did you dream?" Michael said.  "Do tell me."

The light was breaking over the valley--not the sun's light, the cold
light of dawn.  The "heat of Aton" was still withheld.

A blush which was invisible to Michael tinged Meg's clear skin.  Her
dream had been beautiful, vivid.  It had illuminated her world again.

"It was nothing very coherent.  I saw no vision, as I did before."  Her
words were spoken guardedly.  "It was the lesson the dream revealed."

"I should like to know, Meg."

"A voice seemed to wake me.  It spoke to me of you.  I was to help
you . . . you were struggling."

"You can help me," Mike said.  "You have."

"It spoke of the oldest of all stories, the battle of light against
darkness.  It said that Egypt in the early days worshipped light; in
the days which followed light was swallowed up in the worship of false
gods."

"Osiris and Set--you know the legend--the fundamental ethics of all
religions."

"I know a little about it," Margaret said.  She paused.  "Please go
on . . . tell me everything."

"In dreams we are so vain, so wonderful . . . you know how it always
is!  The ego in us has unlimited sway.  In my dream I dreamed that my
friendship was to be 'light'; if I withdrew it, you would have
darkness.  What glorious vanity!"

"Oh, Meg, it's quite true!  Will you give me back your sympathy?
I . . ." he hesitated, ". . .  I am trying to be more worthy of it."

"We are friends," she said.  "I was foolish and conceited, my dream
made me see how foolish.  I had no right to . . ."

He interrupted her.  "Yes, you had . . . you weren't foolish.  Your
sensibilities told you what was absolutely true. . . .  I would explain
more if I could."

"No, don't explain--things are explained.  I thought I should find you
here; I wanted to begin the new day happily.  My dream made me see so
very clearly that the world is made up of those who sit in darkness and
those who sit in light, that thoughts are things.  My thoughts were
unjust, unkind, so my world was unkind, unjust.  I made it."

"The light which is Aton," Michael said.

"If we wish to enjoy happiness, we must sit in the light.  We must make
our own happiness."

"In the fullness and glory of Aton."

"God, I suppose you mean," Margaret said.

"The one and only God Whom every human being has striven to worship in
his or her odd way ever since the world began.  There is God in every
man's heart.  It doesn't a bit matter what His symbol may be.  Some
races of mankind have evolved higher forms of worship, some lower;
their symbols are appropriate.  But they are all striving for the one
and same thing--to render worship to the Divine Creator, to sit in the
Light of Aton."

"But the sun," Margaret said--she pointed to the fiery ball on the
horizon--"I thought your divine Akhnaton was a sun-worshipper?"

"He worshipped our God, the Creator of all things of heaven or earth,
even of our precious human sympathy, Meg, for nothing that is could be
without Him, and to Akhnaton His symbol was the sun.  The earlier
Egyptians worshipped Ra, the great sun-god; Akhnaton brought divinity
into his worship.  He worshipped Aton as the Lord and Giver of Life,
the Bestower of Mercy, the Father of the Fatherless.  All His
attributes were symbolized in the sun.  Its rising and setting
signified Darkness and Light; its power as the creative force in
nature, Resurrection.  It evolved mankind from the lower life and
implanted the spirit of divinity in him through the Creator of all
things created.  The sun was God created, His symbol, His
manifestation."

"Look," Margaret said, "look at it now--it is God, walking in the
desert."

      *      *      *      *      *      *

For a little time they stood together, their material forms side by
side.

      *      *      *      *      *      *

Michael's house-boy, with a deferential salaam, suddenly informed him
that his bath had been waiting for him and was now cold.

Before Michael hurried off Margaret said, "Thank you for my first
lesson in Akhnaton's worship."  She held out her hands.

"We all worship as he did, all day long," he said, "when we admire the
sun and the stars and the flowers, when we admire all that is
beautiful, we are seeing God."

"I adore beauty," Margaret said, "but I forget that beauty is God.
You, like Akhnaton, are conscious of God first, the beauty He has made
afterwards.  If there had been the text 'God is Beauty' as there is
'God is Love,' it might have helped us to understand."

"I forget him," Michael said, "you know how easily."

"It is far better to know and love, even if you are human and
forget. . . ." she paused ". . . than always to sit in darkness, to sit
outside the door."

"I don't see how any one can," Michael said.  "It is all so exquisitely
evident.  The desolation must be so terrifying, like living in this
lonely spot with no watch-dogs to keep off evil-doers.  It takes great
courage to live on one's own strength, one's own material self."

They had parted, Margaret going to her room, Michael to his tent.
Freddy, who was almost dressed, saw two figures approaching, wrapped up
in big coats.

"That's a good job!" he said.  "The sunrise has made them friends
again."  He was out in the desert the next moment, hearing the
roll-call of the workmen, who had all ranged themselves up in a line
near the hut.




CHAPTER IX

One evening, some weeks later, when the trio, Margaret, Freddy and
Michael, were busily engaged in sorting and cleaning the day's finds,
which had been more than usually interesting, Margaret held up for
inspection a tiny alabaster kohl-pot, which she had freed from the
incrustations of thousands of years.  It was exactly similar to a
little green glass bottle which she had bought in the bazaar at Assuan,
in which the modern Egyptian, but more especially the Coptic, women
carry the kohl which they use for blacking their eyes and eyebrows.
Margaret showed Freddy the bottle, which led to a discussion about the
similarity of the customs of the modern Egyptians and those in the
pictures in the tombs, whose decorations always reveal the more human
and intimate side of the life of ancient Egypt than the decoration of
the temples.

"They were as vain and fond of making up as any woman of to-day,"
Freddy said.  "We find no end of recipes for cosmetics and hair-dyes
and restorers.  One popular pomade was made of the hoofs of a donkey, a
dog's pad and some date-kernels, all boiled together in oil.  It was
supposed to stop the hair from falling out and restore its brilliancy.
There is another, even more savoury, for hair-dying."

"Do you suppose they still use that receipt?" Michael said.

"I shouldn't wonder.  Customs never die in Egypt--they have had the
same superstitions and the same customs for thousands of years.  The
Copts have clung more jealously to them, of course.  The Moslem
invasion did a little to change some of them, but not many."

Margaret listened while Freddy explained how the Moslems, after the
Arab invasion, behaved with regard to the festivals and superstitions
of the pagans very much in the same way as the Early Christian church
in Rome behaved with regard to the pagan festivities and
superstitions--adapting them, as far as was possible, to the new
religion, grafting on such things as the people would not or could not
renounce.  The wisdom of the custom was obvious.  The new converts, who
believed in one God Whose Prophet had come to knock down all graven
images in the temples, were still allowed the protection and comfort of
their personal amulets, which were powerful enough to protect them from
every evil imaginable, or to bring them all the blessings their simple
souls desired.  Arab workmen, who believe that Allah wills all things,
that whatsoever happens, it is his purpose, will flock round any
soothsayer who professes to see into the future and do the most absurd
things conceivable to keep off the evil eye.  The eye of Horus is still
their favourite amulet.

"Abdul professes to tell fortunes and see into the future.  They do
sometimes manage to hit off some wonderfully clever guesses," Freddy
said.  "Abdul has been curiously correct in a number of things he has
foretold relating to this bit of work."

"What did he tell you about this excavation?"

"He didn't tell me--I overheard the workmen's chatter.  He has worked
them up to a pitch of absurd excitement."

"What sort of things has he foretold?  Good or bad?  What things have
come true?"

"I forget the small points now.  I really can't tell you.  He predicts
all sorts of extravagant things about the inside of the tomb, says he
has seen visions of a wonderful figure of a queen, dressed as if for
her bridal, and the place all glittering with gold and precious
stones--the most superb tomb that has ever been opened."

"Oh!" Meg said excitedly.  "I wonder if it will be?--if there will be
any truth in it?"

"Tommy-rot!" Freddy said.  "But the excitement's spread--the men are
working like mad--never did so much good work before."

"May I talk to Abdul?  I'd love to have my future told!"

"I'd rather you didn't--at least, I would rather the other workmen
didn't know he had spoken to you.  I don't like them to imagine that we
believe in such things."

"Very well," Meg said.  "I see what you mean."

"You are never wise to let the natives lose their respect for your
disdain of spooks and superstitions.  I never scoff at their fears and
beliefs in every sort of imaginable supernatural power, but I like them
to think that my religion places me above such terrors.  We pray to our
Christian God to protect us according to His will; they say five
prayers to Allah daily, the one and only God, and at the same time at
every hour of the day they perform countless acts and ceremonies to
propitiate malign spirits and powers.  They are a curious people--the
best of them are very devout, but some of the most devout are not the
best by any means."

"Do you mind if Michael sees the fortune-teller?  It would be so
interesting."

"He knows Abdul."  Freddy looked at Mike.  "It's different to letting
one of our womenkind meddle in such things."

"Did the ancients believe in dreams?" Margaret said.  Michael's eyes
had spoken; he had seen the man.

"Don't you remember Joseph's dream?"

"Oh, of course!" Margaret said.  "But Joseph seems a modern in this
valley."

"The ancients looked upon dreams as 'revelations' from a world quite as
real as that which we see about us when we are awake.  They were sent
by the gods and, according to the texts in the tombs, much desired."

Margaret's and Michael's eyes met.  Her dream which had brought them
together again had undoubtedly been sent by God.

There was an industrious silence for a little time, then Margaret
asked, "Have you ever come across any traces of Akhnaton's religion in
the tombs in this valley?"

An amused smile hovered round Freddy's mouth.  It was obvious that
Margaret had caught something of Mike's enthusiasm for the heretic
Pharaoh.

"No, nothing of his religion," he said.  "It is too far from his scene
of action; his influence was almost local--it was a personal influence
and died at his death.  He was a man born before his time; the world
was not ready for his doctrines--they were far above the people's
heads."

"How do we know?" Mike said eagerly.  "Surely God knows best when to
send His messengers, when to reveal Himself?"

"Anyhow," Freddy said, "you know that when he died his teachings died
too.  The people who had professed his beliefs returned to their old
gods.  The one and only trace of Akhnaton's influence here is in his
mother's tomb, where every sign of Aton worship has been chopped off
the wall, every trace of his symbols obliterated.  Akhnaton had no
doubt introduced them into his mother's tomb; she had shared his
beliefs, which had not, of course, become extreme at the time of her
death."

"Truth never dies," Mike said.  "His beautiful city was abandoned, his
temples neglected and overthrown, his people again became the victims
of the money-making, political priesthood of Amon-Ra.  But who can say
that the spirit of Akhnaton is dead to-day?  Who can tell that the seed
of his mission bore no fruit?  Thought never dies."

"As you like.  Anyhow, even before he was buried--embalming was a
lengthy process--his religion as a state religion, as anything at all
of any influence, or as a power in the land, was doomed."

"You don't admire him as Mike does," Margaret said.  "He seems to have
been almost as perfect as a human being could be--the first living
being to realize the divinity of God."

"As a religious _dévoué_, he was, as you say, almost a saint.  He spent
his life throwing pearls before swine--you might as well try to make a
charity-school class see the beauty of Virgil in the original--and
letting his kingdom go to rack and ruin."

"Oh," Margaret said, "you didn't tell me that."  Her eyes searched
Mike's.  "Did he let Egypt go to pieces?"

"He was anti-war, as I am," Mike said, "as all lovers of God and of
mankind ought to be.  He was perhaps foolish in his belief that if the
world could be converted to the great religion of Aton, which meant
perfect love for everything that God had created and absolute reverence
for everything because He created it, then there would be no wars.  If
God is love and we believe in God, how can we kill each other?
Akhnaton's idea of the duty of a king was the improvement of mankind.
He tried to give men a new understanding of life and of God.  The moral
welfare of the human race was more to him than the aggrandizement of
its emperors."

"I've no patience with all that," Freddy said.  "He inherited a
magnificent kingdom; he let it dwindle almost to ruin.  If you could
read some of the letters of Horemheb, the commander-in-chief of his
army, begging him to send reinforcements to Syria, imploring him to
realize the danger that menaced Asia, you would feel as impatient as I
do with his mission work at Tel-el-Amarna, his cult of flowers and his
new-fangled art."

"A man can't go against his own conscience.  He didn't approve of war.
It's an interesting fact that the only one of the old gods he
recognized was Maît--he built a fine new temple to the goddess of truth
at Tel-el-Amarna.  He carried his enthusiasm too far," Mike said, "I
grant that, but from his point of view these things were of little
account.  If he could have turned the heart of Egypt from the worship
of false gods, if he could have imparted unto the minds of men the
wonder and the love of God, all else, he thought, would follow after."

"A fanatic!" Freddy said.

"So were all saints."

"'For what shall it profit a man,'" Meg said, "'if he gain the whole
world, and lose his own soul?'"  Her voice was significant.  "In his
day, Christ was as great a fanatic, if you like to look at things from
that point of view.  Fancy fasting forty days and forty nights in the
wilderness, calling upon men to leave their work and follow him,
preaching against the rich!  How you would have scoffed at him!"

"If Akhnaton hadn't been a king, if he had merely been a prophet and a
teacher, he'd have been all right.  But just you listen, Meg," Freddy
said, "while I read you what a modern writer says about him, and he is
an intense admirer of the character of Akhnaton.  This is how he
describes what the messengers must have felt when they hurried back to
Egypt to the new capital of the fanatical king at Tel-el-Amarna,
bearing entreaties from the commander-in-chief of the army in Syria to
send reinforcements to help to deliver his distant kingdom from the
oppression of her enemies."  Freddy found the book and opened it.
"Here it is--listen to this: 'The messengers have arrived at the City
of the Horizon,' as Akhnaton called his new capital, 'Their hearts are
full of the agony of Syria.  From the beleaguered cities which they had
so lately left, there came to them the bitter cry for succour, and it
was not possible to drown that cry in words of peace, nor in the jangle
of the septrum or the warbling of pipes.  Who, thought the waiting
messengers, could resist that piteous call?  The city weeps and her
tears are flowing.  Who could sit idle in the City of the Horizon, when
the proud empire, won with the blood of the noblest soldiers of the
great Thothmes, was breaking up before their eyes?  What mattered all
the philosophies in the world, and all the gods in heaven, when Egypt's
great dominions were being wrested from her?  The splendid Lebanon, the
white kingdoms of the sea, Askalon and Ashdod, Tyre and Sidon, Simgra
and Byblos, the hills of Jerusalem, Kadesh and the great Orontes, the
fair Jordan, Turip, Aleppo and distant Euphrates . . . what counted a
creed against these?  God, the Truth?  The only god was He of the
Battles, who had led Egypt into Syria; the only truth the doctrine of
the sword, which had held her there for so many years.'"

Freddy turned over the leaves of the book which he had been reading
from, and began again quoting from Weigall's _Life of Akhnaton_.

"'Love!  One stands amazed at the reckless idealism, the beautiful
folly of this Pharaoh who, in an age of turbulence, preached a religion
of peace to seething Syria.  Three thousand years later mankind is
still blindly striving after these same ideals in vain.'"

"How pathetic!" Margaret said.  "And yet . . ." she hesitated, ". . .
the God of Battles . . .  Akhnaton's was the God of Love, the God of
everlasting Mercy."

"What right had Egypt ever to go into Syria?" Mike said.  "It sounds
fine and one can grow enthusiastic over these beautiful old names and
visualize a million greatnesses that Akhnaton was resigning, but what
right had Egypt in Syria?  The right of might, the right of the
stronger against the weaker--Prussia's might against Poland, Spain's
might against Flanders, any large country's might against a weaker, the
right of armies, the right of the greed of monarchs!  Akhnaton believed
in God, and to his thinking war could not go hand-in-hand with a love
for all that God had created."

"Get out, Mike!" Freddy said.  "You'll get on to Ireland next--I know
him, Meg!"

"I agree with him in a way," Meg said.  "To give people the love of God
and the proper sense of beauty, the enjoyment of all that God has made
for their good, in the best way, which was surely the way of Akhnaton,
seems better than spending the kingdom's wealth and brains in
maintaining armies to kill human beings and invade new territories."

"The great question," Freddy said, "is nationality.  If you don't care
who wipes you out, or to what country or king you belong, well and
good, live the idealized life.  Someone will think quite differently
and gobble you up.  If Akhnaton hadn't died, there would soon have been
no Egypt, no Egyptian peoples."

"They'd have been quite as happy," Mike said, "for in those days the
kings actually owned their empires, they were their own property to do
what they liked with.  The people fought for their King, not for their
country.  An absolute monarch was an absolute monarch, the kingdom was
his to do as he liked with."

"How was it saved?  Was it ever as great again?" Meg asked.

"It was saved by his son dying almost directly after he did and
Horemheb, the great commander-in-chief, at last got his way.  He
persuaded the reigning Pharaoh, who had married Akhnaton's daughter, to
himself lead an expedition and go into Asia.  After that Pharaoh's
death, and the death of the next one, Ay, Akhnaton's father-in-law, who
reigned for a short time--and who, to do him justice, tried to remain
faithful to Akhnaton's ideal Aton worship--the great warrior and
commander-in-chief, Horemheb, was raised to the throne.  He brought
Egypt back to its old conditions.  Do you care to hear what Weigall
says about him?--how completely he wiped out the 'idealism of the
dreamer'?"  Freddy found the passage he wanted.  "'The neglected
shrines of the old gods once more echoed with the chants of the priests
through the whole land of Egypt . . . he fashioned a hundred
images. . . .  He established for them daily offerings every day.  All
the vessels of their temples were wrought of silver and gold.  He
equipped them with priests and with ritual priests, and with the
choicest of the army.  He transferred to them lands and cattle,
supplied with all necessary equipment.  By these gifts to the neglected
gods, Horemheb was striving to bring Egypt back to its natural
condition and with a strong hand he was guiding the country from chaos
to order, from fantastic Utopia to the solid Egypt of the past.  He
was, in fact, the preacher of sanity, the chief apostle of the Normal.'"

"It was in his reign," Michael said, "that Akhnaton's fair city at
Tel-el-Amarna was utterly abandoned; his beautiful decorations, which
were intended to illustrate to the people the beauty of God in Nature,
were ruthlessly destroyed.  His body, which had been laid in the
far-away cliffs behind his city, was removed and placed in his mother
Queen Thi's tomb in this valley."

"What a tragic life!" Margaret said.  She was thinking of the sad face
as she had seen it in her vision.  Did any one understand him?  Freddy
evidently understood Horemheb, the apostle of the Normal, who scorned
the fantastic Utopia of Akhnaton, much better.

"He was very much beloved and probably as much understood by a few as
most pioneers have been.  It was in his father-in-law's tomb that his
beautiful hymn was discovered, for he was one of his devoted followers
in Akhnaton's lifetime."

Margaret smiled.  "The beautiful hymn you said to me that morning at
dawn, Mike?"

"The same," Michael said.  "I have often thought of it in connection
with St. Francis' Canticle to the Sun."

"It is difficult," Margaret said, "to know how far wars and
empire-building, and everything that makes for worldly-ambition and
encourages the vanity of monarchs, are compatible with the true meaning
of the words 'God is Love,' with the true conception of Christ's
doctrines."

"Which were Akhnaton's," Michael said.  "He did all in his power to
raise the morals of his people.  He was the first king to recognize the
higher rights of women, to insist on the reverence of womanhood.  He
brought his queen forward on every public occasion, and that had never
been heard of before.  He tried to introduce a new ideal of home-life.
He was a model father and husband.  He thought of nothing but the moral
welfare of his people and of their happiness.  He was willing to lose
his kingdom for the saving of their souls."

"And yet he was a bad king?" Margaret said.

"He had none of the qualities of a ruler or an empire-builder," Freddy
said.

"Damn empire-building!" Mike said.  "If people would only stick to
their own natural territory and not go straying into other peoples!"

"I wonder what you'd do if Germany strayed into ours?  Sit down and let
them walk over you?"

"I'd do what you'd do," Mike said, with a flash of Irish anger in his
eyes--"kill every damned one of them!"

"There you are!" Freddy said hotly.

"No, I am not," Michael said, "for, as I said, what we've got, let us
keep--England's possessions no more belong to Germany than my soul
does.  But some of our wars--well!" he laughed.  "Empires are built up
in rum ways, ways I don't agree with, but we won't do any good by
handing them over now to feed the vanity of the Kaiser.  But the
Egyptians had enough land in Africa to expand in, there was no need for
their warrioring in strange lands."

"Let's chuck the subject," Freddy said good-naturedly, "and stick to
work.  I want to get these boxes cleared out to-night and we never do
good work while we argue."

"I can't help smiling," Margaret said.  "It's really too funny to think
that we've got quite cross and snappy over the character of a man who
lived more than three thousand years ago."

"Oh, we often do that," Michael said.  "You should have heard about a
dozen of us quarrelling some time ago over hair-splitting theories on a
much less human subject, one belonging to pre-dynastic times!"

"I wish Aunt Anna could see us, Freddy, sitting in this funny hut in
this lonely desert valley, cleaning little objects and broken fragments
of things that were buried three thousand years ago and fighting over a
mummy, as she would say!"

Margaret had been working busily, so her tin cigarette-box, which had
been quite full early in the evening with all sorts of small blue beads
and tiny bits of pottery, was almost empty.  She had been able to enjoy
and follow all her brother's remarks about Akhnaton, as Michael had
told her a great deal about him.  In the three weeks which had passed
since their visit to Assuan there had been no return of the vision, so
she had insisted upon Michael telling her all that he could about
Akhnaton.  She felt anxious to understand something about the king
whose personality interested and influenced him so greatly.

Michael had by no means banished the vision from his thoughts.  He was
convinced that Margaret had been privileged to see a vision of
Akhnaton--indeed, the more he dwelt on his message, the more he felt
sure that it was the beginning of a new phase in his life.

Over and over again he had repeated to himself the message: "Tell him
to carry on my work."

Was he doing any work at the present time to help forward mankind?  He
was enjoying himself in a delightful way and to a certain extent he was
assisting Freddy; but such assistance as he gave could easily be given
by another; he was not essential.

There was only one man whom he had a longing to consult and that was
Michael Ireton.  Since his marriage with Hadassah Lekejian, a Syrian
girl of great beauty and strength of character, Michael Ireton had
given his time and brains and money to the founding of settlements in
various parts of Egypt for the raising of the moral status of women in
Egypt.  He was a practical man of the world, with a charming
personality.  His wife was one of the most cultivated and fascinating
women Michael had ever met.

If he confided to Freddy his growing desire to do the work which he
felt was the work he was called upon to do, Freddy would only look upon
it as a fresh example of his drifting character.

The subject of Akhnaton had been dropped and perfect good humour was
restored again.  Michael's thoughts had soared into what Freddy called
his "Kingdom of Idle Dreams."  Freddy's thoughts were very practical,
although they related to the history of a lost civilization and to the
unearthing of objects which the sands of the desert had concealed for
thousands of years.  He and the workers knew that the next few days
would be days of intense excitement.

So far Freddy's surmises had been correct.  The chaff and scoffing
which he had so good-naturedly put up with from the fellow-excavators
who had been to visit the camp were likely to be turned the other way.
He had little or no doubt left that he had struck an important tomb,
probably the tomb of the Pharaoh for whom he was looking.

In a few days the big shaft which led to the mouth of the tomb would be
cleared.  Tons upon tons of debris had been thrown out of it; the work
had been stupendous.  The two hundred native workers and the other more
experienced diggers had worked unremittingly.  Freddy was living in a
high state of nervous tension.  The news had spread far and wide that
"Mistrr Lampton" had discovered a new tomb and one which presumably had
never been entered.  Freddy knew that this news would spread, would be
carried on the wings of the morning in a manner which no European can
ever discover.  Means of transmitting news is one of the secrets which
no native in Africa, North or South, has ever divulged to an European.
There are hundreds of theories on the subject.  Do pigeons act as
carriers?  Some people suggest this theory.  Or is it by some wireless
method which has been known to all primitive races and only lately
discovered by scientific scholars of the West?

So far no one has fathomed the mystery.  But Freddy knew that the news
would be sent far and wide, and that every seeker after "antikas" would
be prowling round the opened site.  Directly the tomb was opened, it
would be the Mecca of every tomb-plunderer.  He had sent word for a
guard of police to be ready to come when he summoned them.

When the tomb was opened he would have to prevent anyone from going
into it until a photographer had arrived from Cairo to photograph it
and until after the Supervisor-General of the Monuments of Upper Egypt
had arrived on the spot and inspected it.

He could feel the excitement of the natives, who have absolutely no
sense of honour where "antikas" are concerned.  It has proved almost an
impossible work to convince them that the excavators and the scholars
who are engaged in the work of archaeology in Egypt, or the wealthy man
who has paid for the expenses of a camp, are not one and all "out on
the make."  They are convinced that these eager, enthusiastic scholars
are just the same as they are, interested in it from a pecuniary point
of view.  The curios and wonders which they dig out of the bowels of
the earth put gold into their pockets.

Freddy's _Ras_, or native overseer, was a highly intelligent man, who
had a genuine appreciation for antiques--he was a clever hand at faking
them and did a good business with tourists--but at heart even he
doubted the sincerity and single-minded purpose of the British School
of Archaeology in Egypt, and "Mistrr Lampton's" absolute
clean-handedness in the business.

Freddy had never left the camp for more than half an hour since the
excavation had become "hot."  It was a strenuous time.

Naturally Margaret's thoughts were centred and engrossed in her
brother's work.  She could scarcely hold her soul in patience while the
deep shaft was being cleared, a long and tiresome job.  But at last
they could count the time by days before the entrance to the tomb would
be reached.

The little store-room in the hut was packed full of boxes which held
the small finds.  Margaret's work for some days past had been to piece
together (Freddy had taught her how) the tiny fragments of a smashed
vase which her brother had found.  The pieces were all there, for it
had been discovered in a little hollow in the sand.  The conventional
decoration was of an unique type; and on it was traced a branch of a
plant which seemed to Freddy to resemble with extraordinary exactness a
branch of the Indian fig, the prickly pear, so familiar to all
travellers in Southern Italy.  As the Indian fig was not introduced
into Egypt until the Middle Ages, or so it had generally been supposed,
for it was not indigenous, Freddy was anxious to find out if the
decoration on the vase was going to prove that after all it was known
to the Egyptians long before it was brought over from America.  He also
held that there was something in the theory which has of late become
current that camels may have been known and used in Egypt from very
early times, that their absence in all pictorial art in temples and
tombs may be owing to the fact that the Egyptians divided animals into
two classes, the clean and the unclean; that neither into temples nor
into tombs could the unclean be introduced in any form of art
whatsoever.

These were the sort of discussions with which Margaret had already
grown familiar.  She felt that in piecing together and sketching as
accurately as possible the cactus-like branch of the little plant
engraved on the broken vase, she was actually helping to forge a link
in one of the minute chains of Egyptian archaeology.

Her brother's memory amazed her and his intelligence stimulated her.
He had been such a boy at home.  Egypt had converted him into a strong
serious scholar.  His fair head, bent over his work, with the lamplight
shining on it, was so dear to her that impulsively she put her long
strong fingers on the glittering hair; she longed to kiss it.

"Dear old boy!" she said.  "Isn't it all just too exciting?  Isn't life
thrilling?  Isn't it lovely to be alive?"

Freddy did not look up.  "Some girls," he said, "mightn't think this
being very much alive--the sorting out of bits of broken rubbish,
thrown out of a tomb which has been forgotten for two or three thousand
years.  Did you ever think you'd care to know whether a prickly pear
was indigenous to Egypt or was not?  Or whether canopic jars had their
origin in family grocers' jars being lent by the head of the house to
hold the intestines of some dear-departed?"

Meg laughed.  "It is all too odd, but being in it, and actually knowing
that we are going to see into that tomb in a few days and discover who
the king was who was buried there, and all about his personal and
family affairs, and be able to touch the jewels he was buried with,
it's too interesting for words, I think!"

"I hope you won't be disappointed.  It may have been robbed."

"But you don't think so?"

"No, I don't--not at present.  There was a tomb opened at one of the
camps, not long ago, which told a tragic story of the end of robbery
and plunder.  The roof had fallen in while the burglar was busy
unwrapping the cloths from the dead mummy.  He was evidently trying to
get at the heart-scarab, I suppose, and at the jewels which the
windings held in their place.  He had been smothered, taken in the act.
Probably he had left his fellow-plunderers at the entrance; the roof
may have looked unsafe, but he had hoped to collect all the jewels and
scarabs before it gave way.  Fate played him a nasty trick.  The roof
caved in, and we have secured all the jewels he had collected together
and have learned a lesson of what must have often happened.  The
mummy's body was, of course, still perfect.  Of the intruder only bones
were visible and some fragments of his clothes.  Things keep for ever
in these hermetically-sealed Egyptian tombs, where neither rust nor
moth ever entered in, but where thieves did break through and steal."

"How thrilling!" Margaret said.  "How did you guess that the skeleton
was the skeleton of a robber?  I suppose as he never returned, his
friends just went off and left him?"

"By the scattered jewels and the way the mummy was lying.  Why should a
skeleton be inside a royal tomb?  Why should the mummy be out of its
coffin and partly unrobed?  We have actually found before now plans
which the sextons and the guardians of the tombs had made for
themselves, of all the tombs in the cemetery which was in their care.
They knew how they could be entered one from another.  Of course, this
valley is different.  The tombs are isolated and carefully hidden.  It
was never a public cemetery."

"Was Akhnaton's tomb intact?  Had it been robbed?"

Freddy laughed.  "Back again to the tabooed subject?"

Meg laughed too.  "We shan't fight this time, I promise."

"His city and palace and tomb were utterly desolated, but his mummy had
been taken away from his own tomb, before it was desolated, and brought
to his mother's."

"Oh, you told me--I forgot."  Into Meg's mind came again the words
spoken by the sad voice, "My earthly body was brought to my mother's
tomb in this valley."

When the night's work was completed, Meg voted that they should sit for
a few minutes in front of the hut and try to get the "mummy-shell" and
the microbes of Pharaonic diseases out of their nostrils.  Freddy had
never allowed them to sleep right out in the open, much as they had
wished it.  It was not safe, even with the dogs and his trustworthy
house-boys.  He would not hear of it; and he was wise.

Gladly he agreed to refreshing their lungs with the beautiful night
air.  Indeed, they were all three so happy together and there was so
much to talk about and discuss, that bed seemed a bore.  Physically
tired as they were, owing to the nervous excitement in the atmosphere
of their day's surroundings, sleep seemed very far off.

"Just half an hour, Freddy," Margaret said, as she threw herself down
on a long lounge chair, and clasping her hands behind her head, gazed
up to the heavens.  "How glorious it is!" she said.  "I'm so happy."

They all three lighted cigarettes and smoked in silence.  Freddy was as
happy as Meg; Mike was restless.

At the end of the half-hour Meg got up and said, "Who'd exchange this
for a city?  Freddy, you ought to get to bed--you're dead tired,
really."

He rose reluctantly.  "I suppose I must."  His thoughts were on the
morrow's work.  If the tomb was going to be a really big thing, it
meant a lot more to him than Meg understood.  He was very young; he had
not as yet struck any remarkable find; he had his reputation to make.
His theories had caused much comment.

"I could never live in a city again," he said.  "This life has made it
impossible.  And the odd thing is that it has made cities seem to me
the loneliest, most desolate places in the world.  I never feel in
touch with anyone.  Even the other night at the ball, jolly as it was,
I never once talked to anyone about anything that really interested me.
I never felt that anyone would understand a single thing about all that
is my real life.  I suppose everyone feels the same--that their real
selves are lost in crowds."

Michael and Margaret looked at each other.  They had experienced the
feeling; they had lost each other.  In the valley they had come back to
the things of Truth.

"You know I always abhorred town-life," Mike said, "and all its
artificiality and rottenness and needless accumulation of unnecessary
things."

"Brains congregate in cities, all the same," Freddy said, "if you can
only strike them.  We'd get too one-sided here, too lost in the past.
It's never wise to let your hobbies and work exclude all other
interests."

"I begin to think there is no past," Meg said.  "Time lost itself in
Egypt.  Three thousand years mean nothing.  The people who lived and
ruled before Moses was born are more alive and real to-day for us than
the events of yesterday's evening paper.  I think I have learned just a
tiny bit of what infinity means."

"Or rather, you have learned that you haven't," Mike said.  "By the
time you have discovered that three thousand years are just yesterday,
you have grasped the truth of the fact that no mortal mind can conceive
the meaning of the word infinity."

"Have you ever seen a ghost in Egypt, Freddy?" Margaret said,
irrelevantly.

"No, never," he said.

"Did the ancients believe in them?"

Freddy was locking up the hut.  "We never come across any writing or
pictures to show us that they did, so I don't think it's likely.  They
have told us most things about themselves and about what they saw and
feared."

"I wonder?" Margaret said meditatively.  "I wonder if they did or
didn't?"

"Of course they believed," Michael said, "that the soul of a man, the
_anima_, at the death of the body, flew to the gods.  It came back at
intervals to comfort the mummy."

"That's nothing to do with what we call ghosts," Freddy said, "and no
one but the mummy is supposed to have been visited by it.  It took the
form of a bird with human hands and head; it was called the _ba_."

"Oh, my friendly _ba_!" Meg said.  "I have just been reading all about
it--in Maspero's book you see pictures of it sitting on the chest of
the mummy."

"That's it," Freddy said.  "You're getting on.  But as for real ghosts,
there's no record of them--not that I know of.  Good-night," he said,
"I'm off."

"Good-night," Meg said, "and the best of luck to tomorrow's dig."

For a moment Michael and Meg stood together.  "I know what is in your
heart," she said.  "I begin to think that Egypt is making practical me
quite psychic."

"I feel I ought to be up and doing.  I believe there is work I can
do--I believe it is the work I can do best."

"You only can judge," Meg said.

"I have always maintained that a man should devote himself to the work
he can do best, no matter how unpractical or how unremunerative it may
seem to others.  He must be himself, he must work from the inside."

"You are doing good work here."

"Not my work--another's."

"I can't advise.  I know you must judge."

"It means leaving this valley if I do it."

"Oh," Meg said, "not yet?  Not until the tomb is opened, anyhow?"

"No," he said, "I'll wait for that.  I want to see Ireton--I'm going to
see him to-morrow when I go to Luxor for Freddy."

"Are you going?" she said.  "I didn't know."

"Yes," he said.  "He wants a lot done and he can't leave the dig."

"No, he can't."  Meg paused; in her heart a fear had suddenly leapt up.
The soft, delicately-tinted woman on the balcony at Assuan stood out
before her as plainly as the luminous figure of Akhnaton had done.  She
was at Luxor!  Two letters had arrived from Luxor for Mike in a woman's
handwriting.

"I will see Michael Ireton," he repeated.  "His work is magnificent; so
is his wife's.  His work is amongst the men."

"In their settlements, you mean?"

"Yes, amongst the Copts, most particularly."

"It will be sad to break up our trio," she said.  "We are so happy."
She held out her hand.  "Good-night.  I was to help, not to retard--I
must remember my dream."

"Good-night."  Mike grasped her hand.  "You are part of the light.
Keep close to me when I am in Luxor tomorrow."




CHAPTER X

Michael not only had to go to Luxor on business for Freddy, but to
Cairo also.  He had gone willingly, because he knew that someone had to
go, and it gave him immense gratification to be able to help his friend
in this time of intense anxiety.

It was absolutely essential that as little time as possible should
elapse between the opening of the tomb and the arrival of the
photographer and the Chief Inspector.  Things which have remained
intact for thousands of years in the even, dry temperature of an
Egyptian tomb, crumble and fade away like the fabric of our dreams when
they are exposed to the open air.

It might be that there would be nothing inside it worth all the trouble
and the arrangements which had to be made; on the other hand, the Arab
seer's vision might be verified.  So far, no trace of burglars, either
ancient or modern, had been discovered.  Not infrequently the finding
of an Arab copper coin, or some disk made of modern metal, an amulet
similar to those worn by the ancients, but made of a composition
unknown to them, will indicate to an excavator that the tomb has been
visited, and probably violated, by modern thieves.

Everything when speaking of time in Egypt is comparative.  These
intruders may have dropped the metal talisman or coin centuries and
centuries ago, soon after the Arab invasion.

Michael had done all his business and was well-content to spend the
remainder of his day in mediaeval Cairo.  He shunned the European
quarter, with its expensive hotels and hybrid Western civilization.  He
preferred the narrow dark streets of the poor natives.  In the East
poverty has at least its picturesque side; in the East, as in Italy,
Our Lady of Poverty has her shrines, not her hovels.  In London, he
asked himself, could Browning have sung "God's in His heaven--All's
right with the world!"?

In London so much is wrong with the world that the true meaning of
Christ's words, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a
needle than for the rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven,"
seems obvious.  To Michael Amory the world was beautiful; its systems
of laws and customs were all wrong.  The misunderstanding of countless
human beings, one with another, through their lack of Love, through
their obliviousness of God, made a whirlpool of his reasoning powers.

Mike had talked matters over with Michael Ireton, who had allowed him
to unburden his full heart.  His ideas and plans were quite unformed.
All that he was now certain of was the fact that he would never settle
down to any profession or career which would mean only the furthering
of his own worldly interests.

"The clear voice prevents me," he said.  "And the fact is, I don't care
a rap about my future position--it can look after itself.  I want to
work as you are working, even if I prove a failure.  I want to get
something of this off my chest."  He laughed.  "It's all so difficult
to express, and so easy to see, isn't it?  Of course, I know that one
man can't set the wrong in the world right, but each man can do what
his right self advises.  Our right self is never wrong."

"Hadassah helped me," Michael Ireton said, "and life has been worth
twice what it was before.  I agree with you--we must lead our own lives
according to our own ideals, not according to the world's."

"Most people think me a fool," Michael said, "simply a rotter and a
drifter, just because I can't settle down to work at a career of my
own, while the world's burden is booming in my ear."

"Think things well over," Hadassah said.  "Don't rush into plans which
may prove a disappointment.  Let your ideas materialize.  You are never
really idle--you will be sending thought-waves out into the world; they
will bear fruit.  Thought never dies; for good or for evil, it is
everlasting."

"But I have been thinking--or drifting, as Lampton says, just idly
drifting, for what seems to me like ages."

"Drifting closer to the Light," Hadassah said.  "It has all been in
order, it has all been a part of the Guiding Power."

"Do you think so?  I wish I knew.  Lampton thinks I've no ambition.  I
have, of a sort, but it's not of a money-making kind, it's not going to
make my name or what you could call a career.  I want to teach people
how to live, and I don't know how to do it myself."

"I understand," Ireton said.  "There's something out here, in the
simplicity of desert life and the East generally, that lessens our
wants.  The fruits of hard labour are not so necessary as in England;
the flesh-pots of Egypt are in the sunshine.  If you have just enough
to get along with, here in the East, and have cultivated tastes, life
can be wonderfully beautiful.  Poverty need never mean degradation--in
fact, it has its advantages."

"That's it!" Michael Amory said.  "I want to let people know how
wonderfully beautiful life can be, even without wealth and worldly
power, and why it is beautiful.  I want them to realize the essence of
things, to let those poor, crowded, degraded wretches in London know
the sweetness of work in God's open spaces.  I feel that I must do my
little bit in helping things forward.  I want to let in a few chinks of
light. . . ."

Hadassah, oddly enough, finished his quotation from "Pippa Passes":
"You want to give them eyes to see that

  "'The year's at the Spring,
  And day's at the morn;
  Morning's at seven;
  The hillside's dew-pearled:
  The lark's on the wing;
  The snail's on the thorn;
  God's in His heaven--
  All's right with the world!'"


Michael Ireton suggested that he should go off for a time into the
desert and find himself.  "There's nothing else so helpful," he said.
"I've tried it."  Hadassah's eyes met her husband's.  She understood;
she remembered.

And so Michael Amory left them strengthened and helped, not so much by
their advice as by their understanding.  Hadassah had charmed him, as
she charmed everyone who met her.  Her happiness as the wife of the
Englishman who had scorned the gossiping tongues of Cairo by marrying
her, and her pride in the young Nicholas, their son, who was just
learning to walk, made Michael Amory a little envious.  Michael
Ireton's home and life seemed almost ideal.  This wealthy, happy couple
lived in the world and yet not for the world; they had discovered the
true meaning of life.

Michael's thoughts were brimful of Hadassah and her husband, her beauty
and the romance of their marriage, the details of which were familiar
to him, as he pushed his way through the labyrinth of native streets in
mediaeval Cairo.

After the silence of the desert, the noise was terrific--the shouts of
the water-carriers, the yells of the native drivers of the swaying
cabs, as they dashed at a reckless pace through the struggling and
idling crowds.  It was the most crowded hour of the day; the native
town was wide awake.  Camels laden with immense burdens of sugar-canes
brushed the foot passengers almost off the narrow sideway; small boys,
with large black eyes and small white _takiyehs_, darted in and out
with brass trays piled high with little enamelled glass bowls.

Michael longed to close his ears with his fingers, but had he attempted
to do so, a donkey, carrying terracotta water-jars of an ancient and
unpractical shape, or a portly, high-stomached Turk would assuredly
have robbed him of his balance.

He drifted on in a semi-conscious state of all that was going on around
him, hating the noise, but enjoying every now and then the feast of
colour which some group of strangely-mixed races presented.  More than
once, in the midst of all this noise and clamour, he saw a devout
Moslem alone with his God.  Before all the world, he was praying in
absolute solitude.  His mind had created perfect silence.

And so Michael drifted on.  Only his subconscious self was leading him
to his destination.  He was going to a court of peace, to a strange
friend who had taught him much simple philosophy and beauty, an African
whose acquaintance he had made two years before, when he was in
Gondokoro.  Michael had saved the African's life by giving him some
pecuniary assistance and carrying him on his own camel to the nearest
village.  He had come across him while he was on his journey which he
performed on foot--from the heart of Africa to the university of
el-Azhar in Cairo.

Since his youth, this old man had saved up money for the journey.  It
had been the ambition and the desire of his life to study in the great
university of el-Azhar, the most important Moslem university in the
world.  His money had all been stolen from him, when Michael's servant
found him.  When he told his master of the condition the poor creature
was in, a state of semi-starvation, Michael had taken him to the
nearest village and there paid for a doctor to attend to him, and had
supplied him with sufficient money to greatly mitigate the fatigue and
suffering of his long pilgrimage to Cairo.

The journey had, of course, not been of such a hopeless character as
might be supposed, for in every Moslem village there is a rest-house
with free food for poor travellers; but even so, Michael knew that the
distances between the desert villages are often enormous, and that they
only supplied the food for the period of rest which the pilgrim needed.

Eight months later, when Michael was in England, he heard through the
_'Ulama_ of the _riwak_ in el-Azhar to which he belonged by
nationality, that the old man had arrived and that he was now living
the life of a mystic and a recluse.  In a beautiful imagery of words,
he had begged the _'Ulama_ to send his gratitude and thanks to the
Englishman by whom, God, in His everlasting mercy, had sent him relief.

On Michael's return to Egypt the next year, almost the first thing
which he had done on reaching Cairo was to go to el-Azhar and inquire
at the ancient abode of peace if he could see his old friend.  He had
been admitted and exceptional courtesy had been extended to him.  He
was an unbeliever and a despised Christian, yet it had been through his
act of charity that one of Allah's children had been nursed back to
life and enabled to give his last years to the study of the Koran.  He
had been allowed to visit the old man from time to time.

To-day, as he walked through the noisy streets and smelt the obnoxious
smells coming from an infinite variety of Oriental foods and customs,
he longed to be back in the quiet valley, to feel the golden sand once
more under his feet, to see Margaret's eyes smile their welcome.  If he
had caught the midday train, he would have been far away from Cairo by
now.  Yet something had led him to the heart of Islam, to that strange
and unworldly seat of ancient learning.  The very meaning of the word
Islam suggests the atmosphere of the place--resignation, self-surrender.

When at last he arrived at the gates and was admitted into the
splendour of the spacious court, his heart was lifted up.  Its ancient
dignity, its divine sense of calm and, above all, the sonorous sounds
of the Moslems chanting their _suras_ of the Koran, intoxicated his
senses.  As St. Augustine was intoxicated with God, so Michael was
intoxicated with the spirit of Islam.

He knew that at certain times--during Moslem festivals, for
instance--fanaticism often ran so high in this, the greatest of all
Moslem centres, that it would be dangerous for a Christian to set foot
inside the courtyard gate.  It made him glow with pleasure that he, by
his little act of love--or charity, as it is less pleasantly
termed--was permitted to enter the courtyard at almost any time.  This,
of course, he would not do; the _'Ulama_ had given him permission, but
he would not take advantage of his gracious offer.

To this richly-endowed university students come from all parts of the
world, merely to study the interpretations of problematical passages in
the Koran--poor students from India and China, wealthy citizens from
Tunis, delicate-featured Malays from the Straits Settlements and
negroes from Central Africa.

In the courts of el-Azhar these children of Allah become brothers;
their united flag is the green banner of Islam; their nationality is
Islam.  This, Michael felt, was what religion ought to do for mankind.
He tiptoed softly along, winding his way through the devout groups of
students, until he reached a deep colonnade, supported by antique
columns of great beauty, columns which had probably come from ancient
Coptic churches, from Christian churches built in Old Cairo long before
Islam was preached in Egypt.  The colonnade was dark and almost cool
after the open court, where the sun was blazing down upon the groups of
picturesque worshippers and students, who seemed to be totally
oblivious of its heat.  Some elderly men were merely meditating.  It
was a wonderful sight, gracious and solemn and mysterious.  The
concentration of many of the worshippers on God was so strong that they
seemed to see Him with their eyes; it was written on their faces; they
looked as if they actually belonged to God.

Filled with the religious spell of the place, Michael wound his way
through the different class-rooms into which the colonnade was divided,
class-rooms which so little resembled the class-rooms of his own school
or Oxford, that unless he had known what was going on, it would not
have dawned on him that the various professors and teachers were
delivering their lectures and instructing their scholars.  The
divisions of the class-rooms were merely an unwritten law; there was no
boundary-line.  Here and there groups of students, seated on the floor
of the immense colonnade, which was supported on the inner side by
columns of superb proportions, were waiting for their masters.  Here
and there a professor had already arrived; he was standing close to a
column with his pupils grouped round him, just as the village-children
surrounded their native teacher in a desert school.

Out of the eleven thousand pupils who attend the university every year
not one of them would receive any instruction which would enable him to
earn his living, or take his place in the struggle for wealth and power
in the ordinary world of mankind.  Devotion to Islam, and a desire to
enter into a fuller understanding of God through the teachings of the
Koran, alone brought them together from far and near.

Michael knew his way and presently he found himself in the residential
quarter of the university and outside a partition which divided the
small bare room of the man he had come to see from that of his
fellow-students.  The room or cell was empty, except for one
praying-mat and a shelf, which was close to the floor.  On it was a
copy of the Koran and some religious books bound in paper.  In the wall
of this narrow living-room there was an opening which led into another
cell; a tall man would have had to bend almost double to pass under it.
The small recess served as a bedroom.

Michael gently pulled a bell, whose chain hung against the iron grating
which fronted the humble abode.  As it sounded, an emaciated figure
appeared under the arched aperture and a sonorous voice cried out in
Arabic, "Peace be with you."

Michael, who knew that this Moslem greeting is reserved for all true
believers, for members of the Islamic brotherhood, that it is rarely,
if ever, offered to Christians, thought that the old man had not seen
him, that his gracious salutation was for one of his own faith.  He did
not venture to return it in the prescribed Moslem fashion, "On you be
peace and the mercy of God and His Blessing."  He merely waited for a
few moments, until the bent figure stood upright, and the dark eyes in
the thin face met his own.

"It is you, O my son.  I have long looked for you."

Michael's heart warmed with happiness.  Then the Moslem greeting had
been for him.  He felt that peace was with him.

"I seek your counsel, O my father."

"May Allah counsel me and bring you prosperity."  A lean arm, a mere
bone covered with a sun-tanned skin, reached for a key which was
hanging from a nail in the wall.  Without speaking, he unlocked the
gate.  Michael noticed the fleshlessness of the fingers and wrist.

"Enter, my son, if it so please you to honour my humble abode."

Michael entered and waited in silence, until the old African had slowly
and carefully locked the door again.

"To you, O my son, my dwelling-place seems empty and bare; to me it is
filled with the treasures of paradise, the sweet fragrance of white
jasmine."

"I understand," Michael said.

"My son," the old man said, "it is because you understand that I am
here, in this little room, glorified by the presence of Allah, made
beautiful by His exceeding great beauty.  I see many flowers; I can
hear the singing of birds and the running of cool waters."

"Your home is an abode of peace.  Its beauty is the perfection of
understanding.  Your jasmine is the fragrance of love."

"Our thoughts, my son, are our real riches.  In no place are we far
from Allah.  What of your work--has it prospered?"

This was, Michael knew, the usual Moslem greeting to a friend; it did
not refer to any particular form of work or to his worldly affairs.

"All is well, O my father."

"I have no bodily refreshment to offer you, my son."  He smiled a
queer, grim smile; it stretched the hard skin of his face, which
mid-African suns had tanned.

"I need no material food, O my father," Michael said, "I have eaten
well and I know your frugal life.  I seek better food."

"That is well, my son.  Prayer is better than food.  I have prayed for
you."

Michael knew that at el-Azhar all studies are absolutely free; the
teaching is entirely gratuitous.  The poor students even receive their
food from the rich endowments of the various _riwaks_ to which they
belong.  This Michael had learned when he saved the old man's life at
Gondokoro.  He had discovered the fact that when once he was inside the
gate of this gracious institution, he would be sheltered and fed and
taught by the love of Islam.  Wealthy students pay for privileges and
for more luxurious quarters.  This visionary and pilgrim asked for
nothing more than food enough to keep him alive.  What he desired of
life was the time and means for studying the teachings of the Koran and
the receiving of instruction from learned professors in the refinements
of theology and in the sacred traditions.  His life had been spent in a
treadmill of hard labour.  In mid-Africa his duty had been, for as long
as he could remember, the guiding of a camel in its unceasing round of
a primitive native well, the drawing up and emptying of buckets.

His smile was so mystical and ecstatic while he offered his apologies
to Michael for the lack of hospitality, that Michael knew that he was
visualizing and enjoying far greater luxury and affluence than had ever
been the lot of the richest Mameluke of old days.

They were seated on the floor of the outer cell.

"You have been much in my thoughts, O my son.  Allah has desired it.  I
have seen strange happenings for you.  I know that the Light has come
nearer."

Michael bowed his head and murmured a few words inaudibly.

"The Lord of the Worlds has revealed himself to you, O my son.  My
unworthy prayer has been answered."  He paused.  "Why have you not
come?  Since the Great Weeping (the inundation of the Nile) you have
not left the valley?--you have not come?"

"Yes," Michael said.  "I have left the valley.  But only work could
bring me to Cairo.  I was busy."

"I have much to tell you, my son, much that Allah has shown me."

"Please instruct me, O father.  I came to you for counsel; in my heart
there is unrest."

"I have seen you," he went on, regardless of Michael's almost inaudible
remarks, "I have seen you travelling on a long journey.  I have seen
many trials and many temptations for you.  I have also seen you in the
great Light.  For you there is a treasure laid up, not only in heaven,
but on earth, which will help you in the work which the clear voice
counsels."

"This is strange," Michael said.  "O my father, I am already greatly
disturbed; I come to you for help."

"Do not fear, my son.  God responds to and supplies the demands of
human nature.  He has willed that you should devote your life to His
teachings."

"You forget, my father.  I am not of your faith.  I have not embraced
Islam."

"I have my message to deliver.  I have seen what I have seen.  Every
religion which gives a true knowledge of God and directs in the most
excellent way of His worship, is Islam."

"You have seen me giving my life to all that I feel to be most urgent
in the life of all who know the truth?"

"I have seen you, by Allah's aid and by His bountiful mercy,
accomplishing work which will bestow great blessing and peace upon your
soul."

"I have thought much of all this," Michael said, "since we last met.
The idea has never left me, yet I am puzzled.  Why should I feel like
this, when better men do not?"

"God, in His almighty word, has declared a higher aim of man's
existence, O my son."

"Then why do I not better understand?  I feel nothing but
dissatisfaction, unfruitfulness."

"A man may not always understand.  A hundred different motives may hold
him back.  But the truth remains, my son, that the grand aim of man's
life consists in knowing and worshipping God and living for His sake."

"I wish I could decide!  Some people see the road so plainly before
them.  Mine is broken, and often it is totally lost in the desert
sands."

"A man has no choice, my son, in fixing the aim of his life."

"That is your faith, my father."

"Man does not enter the world or leave it as he desires.  He is a
creature, and the Creator Who has brought him into existence has
assigned an object for his existence."

There was silence for a little time, while the old man meditated and
recited a _sura_ from the Koran.

"Already, my son, even though you do not know it, you are in the faith.
You have seen the perfect Light.  Remember that no one can fight with
God, or frustrate His designs.  Not once, but many times, I have seen
you, my son, travelling on this journey.  God has sent many prophets to
lead mankind into the knowledge of truth.  Moses and Christ, they had
their divine tasks, but the last and the best of the messengers of God
was Mohammed, praised be His holy name.  Some day, O my son, He will
perfect your religion, and complete His favours by making Islam your
faith.  Before these messengers there were others, for God has never
left the world in desolation.  I have seen you surrounded by Light, a
light which comes from one of God's messengers, who is never far from
you.  As I see him, always in the midst of a great light, like the
light of the sun, he resembles no mortal I have ever seen on this
earth, or any king I have been shown in my dreams.  He has greatly
suffered for mankind, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, as
was the Prophet Christ."

Michael was greatly disturbed.  The old man's eyes were far from him.
His words had their meaning for Michael more than for himself.  The
great sunlight was the rays of Aton.  The treasure of which he had
spoken--was it the treasure of which the vision in the valley had
spoken to Margaret?

"Some day I may have more counsel to offer you, my son.  To-day I have
but strange visions, strange messages.  This treasure you are to seek
lies in the desert; it is a treasure of great value.  I see much gold,
but also, my son, much tribulation.  This gold . . . it has been lost
to the world . . . for many centuries. . . ."

"It is all very strange, my father.  Your words are full of meaning.
In Egypt there was a King, before the days of Moses, who sacrificed his
kingdom to give his people God.  His was the religion of the true God
and His everlasting mercy."

The old man recited another _sura_ from the Koran.  "Go and pray, my
son, open your heart to prayer, for prayer is better than strife;
prayer is greater than miracles.  Perseverance in prayer is Islam."

"Can you tell me nothing more?" Michael said.  "Is it not folly to
start out on a journey which has no definite ending, no practical
purpose?"

"I cannot tell you more, my son, nor can I tell you why these visions
have been revealed to me.  All I know is that I cannot doubt their
source."

"Do you, my father, then absolutely believe in visions?" Michael said.
"I am only a seeker after truth.  I am convinced of so little."

"My son, believe in visions.  Is their meaning not written on the leaf
of a water-melon?"  (A thing well-known.)

"We read of them in the Bible."

"Did I not tell you that I knew of your coming?  It was revealed to me
in a vision.  I saw you groping and losing your way.  I saw you in
thick darkness.  I saw you struggling for the Light.  Is all that not
true?  Have you never lost the Light?  Has your path been straight and
easy?  Has the flesh not tempted you?"

Michael bent his head.

"For many weeks a friend has been very close to you.  She is in the way
of truth.  Hold fast to her.  There are others who I see in darkness."

"Yes," Michael said.  "That is all true.  You have seen clearly."

"You will leave those you care for most, my son, and go on a journey
into a new country across the river.  It is all His purpose; it is all
a part of the Guiding Hand, the Ruling Power."

Michael remained lost in thought.  That the old African loved him as a
son he had no doubt.  He knew that his ardent desire was that he should
be the means of converting him to the true faith.  He knew that the
little help which he had once been able to give him had won his undying
gratitude.  This strange creature, who had only entered upon his
university career after his hair had become white and his body worn to
a shadow, had earned Michael's respect and veneration.  He was
conscious of the fact that, devout Moslem as the recluse was, he did
not look upon all Christians as heretics and unclean.  Long ago Michael
and he had exchanged thoughts on their conceptions of God.  The pious
Moslem had come to the conclusion that but for his lack of a proper
understanding of the Koran and of the Prophet's relation to God,
Michael was at heart a Mohammedan.  He worshipped the one and only God
Whom the Prophet had come to reveal.  Michael believed in Christ just
as he himself believed in Him, as one of God's Messengers, as one of
God's Methods of manifesting Himself to mankind.

He had no hesitation in speaking to Michael or in reciting passages
from the Holy Book in his presence.  Daily he prayed that he might
embrace the faith of Islam.  It was his love for him and his gratitude
which made him eager for this happiness to be bestowed upon his
benefactor.

For a long time Michael remained with his old friend, who was glad to
learn from him many things which could never have reached his ears from
any other source.  He lived as a hermit and a recluse inside his little
cell, which was lost in the vast dimensions of the Mosque of el-Azhar.
As he was lost to the world, so was he surrounded by things of the
spirit.

It was late in the afternoon when at last Michael said good-bye and the
aged student locked himself into his cell.  His adieu was lengthy and
beautiful and expressed in the true Moslem fashion.  This ardent
Englishman was as dear to him as a son.  He had no sons of his own, or
indeed any friends who loved him.  There was scarcely a soul in his old
home who remembered his existence.  The man who had guided the camel at
the well had ceased to cause even his late master a passing thought.
The native teacher who had instructed him in the Koran in his boyhood,
along with the other village children, and who had first inspired him
with the desire to study the Sacred Book at el-Azhar, had long since
gone to that world where "black faces shall turn white and white faces
shall turn black."

As Michael retraced his steps circumspectly through the class-rooms of
the university and across the open court, where the afternoon sun
almost blinded him--the darkness of the old man's cell made it seem
even fiercer than it had been in the morning--his mind was filled with
a thousand thoughts.  He was much more restless than he had been on his
arrival.  Had he done wisely in paying this visit to the visionary?
Was he only adding unrest and bewilderment to his soul?

The old man's last words had been to counsel him to follow the dictates
of his own conscience, which was God.

"On this journey, which will lead you into the Light, a child of God
will guide you, a child of God will point out the way."  These had been
his last words.

Michael knew that with Moslems the expression "a child of God" is
generally applied to religious fanatics, and to simples, people who
have not practical sense to enable them to enter into the struggle for
existence, people who have, as the Western world terms it, "a screw
loose."

"A child of God will lead you.  To him has been revealed this ancient
treasure, which the desert sands have guarded for unnumbered years."

Michael wondered if he was mad or dreaming.  To believe a single word
of the mystic's advice seemed rank folly; but here again he was brought
face to face with a fact stranger than fiction.  This African had
spoken of a King who had been God's messenger before the days of Moses
and Christ.  He was totally without learning, except in the Koran; he
was ignorant of the existence or personality of the great heretic
Pharaoh: of Egyptian history he knew nothing.  Yet what he had said and
visualized fitted in with Michael's theory and belief that Akhnaton had
buried a great hoard of gold and jewels near his capital of
Tel-el-Amarna.  Nor was Michael alone in his belief in this theory.

As the gate of the university court was closed behind him, Michael took
a last look at the wonderful scene.

Groups of woolly-haired Africans, as black as the basalt tablets in the
museum, were seated on the floor of the white marble court.  Some were
eating their frugal meal; some were lying on their backs resting; while
others were lost in prayer.  Here and there a tall _sheikh_ or a
professor was standing talking to a group of students, seated on the
ground at his feet, his flowing robes and majestic turban proclaiming
the distinction of his calling.  Not one of the professors or teachers
received a penny for their services; the most learned men in Egypt
offered their services free.  The idea and theory of the institution is
beautiful and elevating.

Yet Michael knew that to Freddy the whole thing was a waste of time and
an antediluvian affair.  In the matter of education, the modern
Egyptian would have been left hopelessly behind in the progress of the
world, but for the Government schools instituted under the British
occupation.  These men at el-Azhar were learning nothing which could
ever serve to put one penny into their pockets.

He could hear Freddy repeating his favourite words of a great modern
writer, "I should always distrust the progress of people who walk on
their heads.  I should always beware of people who sacrifice the
interests of their country to those of mankind."

Freddy had thrown the words at Michael's head hundreds of times when he
had given expression to his Utopian ideas of oiling the world's
creaking hinges, of preventing his predicted world-wide disaster.
Michael always considered that the whole of what was termed the
civilized world was "walking on its head," that only vanity could blind
those who ruled and governed, only arrogance could hide the fact that
the seats of the mighty were tottering.

Freddy did honestly distrust people "who walked on their heads," yet
Michael thought that he would surely still more distrust the people who
did not walk according to their consciences, people who lived the lives
marked out for them by others, by the conventions of the world.

This old man, in his dark cell, nursed in the very bowels of Islam, had
achieved his heart's desire.  He had fulfilled the purpose of his life,
a purpose which to Freddy seemed useless and wasteful.  That was
another question.  He had left a life of endless toil under the
tropical sun of primitive Africa for what to Freddy would have seemed a
mad purpose--to walk to Cairo and spend the last few years of his
existence in the silent contemplation of God.

As he thought of the man's former life, Michael could hear his sonorous
voice chanting the name of Allah in a hundred beautiful forms, as his
bare brown limbs followed in the slow footsteps of a lean white camel
round and round a native well.

Truly, perseverance can work miracles.  Faith had moved mountains, for
God had sent this pauper at the well means whereby he was to achieve
his life-long prayer.  Michael had been allowed to cross his path.
This penniless African had never doubted, he had trusted in Allah.
Conflicting doubts and arguments had delayed Michael.  He had drifted,
one day urged by the unconquerable voice, the next cut off from his
purpose by the advice and companionship of prosperous friends.  He felt
that his faith would move no mountains, his perseverance perform no
miracles.

Were Mohammedans more zealous than Christians?  Was there in theory, in
ideals, any other institution in the world like el-Azhar?  These
students were not paupers; this was no charitable institution.  In this
court there were men of all social grades and professions, eager
students gathered together for one purpose from every part of the
Mohammedan world.

And yet Michael thought that, beautiful as it all was in theory,
wonderful as was the indescribable power of Islam, it gave few, if any,
of its children the true conception of God.  They learned nothing of
the tender Father, of the beauty of Aton.  In Islam there is no
consciousness of God in the song of the thrush to its mate, no
sacredness in the bud of a lily.  In spite of all the exquisite names
by which a Moslem addresses his God, His seat is ever in the high
heavens, He still remains to him the Omnipotent God of Israel, the
all-powerful Jehovah.

Even his old friend, who could visualize the joys of paradise and smell
the perfume of sweet jasmine in his dark cell, did not hear God's voice
in the laughing brook, or see His raiment in the blue of the lotus.

Of Akhnaton's closer and more human religion they were ignorant.  These
students offered obedience and reverence and complete surrender.  How
few of them knew even the meaning of love!  This court was full of
ardent students, many of whom had given up well-paid posts to study the
word of Allah as revealed by the Prophet, yet scarcely one of them
loved the creatures of this world because they were the things of God,
because they were God.  God sang to Akhnaton when spring was in the
year; the birds were His visible form.  God smiled to him when the blue
lotus covered the waters of his lake in the garden-city of his ideal
capital.

To the Moslems God is in the heavens; His immovable seat is there.  To
the ecstatic visionaries who live, as his old friend lived, so cut off
from their natural selves as to be unconscious of their physical body,
these are the delights of paradise, seen through the eyes of mystics.

Michael, who passionately loved the world and all of God that is in it,
wished that they could see that the joys of paradise are everywhere
around us.  No visionary's eyes are needed to enjoy their beauty.

The university was now far behind him; he was retracing his steps to
modern Cairo, where the calm of Islam would seem like a peaceful dream.
The domes of the mosques looked like stationary balloons, made of
delicate lace, floating in the blue sky, the tall minarets like lotus
buds coming up from a vast lake.  A soft mist was etherealizing the
bald realities of the native city.  Only here and there a vivid patch
of colour--the jade-green dome of a saint's tomb, the clear blue or
orange of an Arab boy's shirt, the brightly-appliqued _portičre_ of a
public bath, or the purple robes of a student of the Khedivial
School--these, in their Eastern setting, studded the scene with
precious gems.

Thrust back again into the vortex of noise and striving, Michael felt
as "lonely as a wandering cloud."  His interview with his old friend
had not soothed him; it had neither helped him to determine him in his
views, or to deter him from them.  His thoughts seemed a part of the
surging street.  Michael Ireton's counsel was still the only thing
which he could grasp.  He would go and find himself in the desert.

But mingled with this idea came the two other influences--the old man's
vision, in which he had seen him journeying into the desert in search
of some hidden treasure--and now many visionaries in Egypt had not
found treasure, but had lost their lives and their minds on journeys
after imaginary gold?--and Margaret's influence, Margaret, who had been
given a message for him--of that he felt convinced.  She, at least,
could be trusted, with her sane, practical Lampton brain.  She had made
up no fable.  Her vision had not been the result of her imagination.
And then again came Freddy's voice:

"I should always distrust the progress of people who walk on their
heads."  The words kept recurring over and over again.

Did he, Michael, spend his life "walking on his head"?  He wished that
he knew.

He was passing the wide terrace of Shepheard's Hotel, where tourists
enjoy afternoon-tea.  The scene was cosmopolitan and gay.  Michael was
walking on the side-path, under the level of the terrace.

Suddenly he felt something drop lightly on his hat.  He looked up, and
as he did so a stephanotis flower fell into the street and his eyes
were met by two of clear azure blue.

"What a brown study!" a taunting voice said.  "Come and have a cup of
tea."

"No, thanks," Michael said.  "I'm not dressed for this sort of thing."
He indicated the gaily-dressed crowd.

"I insist," Millicent Mervill said, and as she spoke, she stretched out
her hand and nipped out the book Michael had in his coat-pocket.  "Now
you'll have to come and get it, and I'll order tea.  Fresh tea, for
two, please, Mohammed," she said to the waiter who was standing near
her table.

Michael turned reluctantly and walked up the flight of steps which took
him on to the hotel-terrace.

"How nice!" Mrs. Mervill said happily.  "Now tell me where you have
been.  I heard you were in Cairo.  Were you going back without seeing
me?"

"How did you know I was in Cairo?"

"Ah, that's telling!  First of all you tell me what you have been
doing.  You look tired."  Her voice was tender.  "You are not happy?
And I have been very good!"

"I am tired," Michael said.  "Cairo tires me after the desert.  I have
been to el-Azhar."

"To the university!  I want to go there.  If we had only gone together!
Why didn't you take me?"

A strange smile changed Michael's expression.  If Millicent Mervill had
been there!  He thought of her in that courtyard, in her luxurious
modern clothes.  How absurd her becoming hat would have seemed, how
grotesque her daintily slippered feet!  How little she divined his
thoughts.

"What took you there to-day?  Tell me."

"I have an old friend there, a student."

"A native, do you mean?"

"Yes, a native from the country south of Gondokoro."

"Gondokoro?  How did you come to know him?"

Millicent Mervill's curiosity was unlimited.  Her persistence resembled
the perseverance which is Islam.

"It's a long story," Michael said.  "I always go to see him when I come
to Cairo.  He's a mystic and a religious recluse.  I like him.  We are
great friends."

Mohammed had returned with the tea, and Michael, who was more than
ready for it, lapsed into silence while he ate his Huntley and Palmer
biscuits and drank his tea.  His thoughts went back to el-Azhar.

His silence lasted for some time.  He was very far from Shepheard's
Hotel.  Margaret had not forgotten her promise.  She was closer than
Millicent.

"You are not very polite--I have had to pump you with questions, or you
would not have spoken at all.  I have been patient while you drank your
tea; now talk to me."

"Please forgive me, but you know I did not want to come.  I was hungry
and I was going back to tea.  I am not good company."

"You didn't want to come?"  She laughed.  "Really, your rudeness is
refreshing!  The desert has made you worse than ever."

Michael looked into her beautiful eyes.  "I am in no temper for banter.
You know what I mean, you know why I didn't want to have tea with you
or see you.  Rudeness between us is out of the question."

"All this because you're a dear old puritan.  Or is it because"--she
hardened her eyes--"because you're afraid of the dark-haired girl?  Has
she forgiven you?"  In the same breath she said, "When are we going on
our journey?  It's my turn soon."

"What do you mean?" he said.  "I wish you wouldn't talk like that.  We
are going on no journey."

"You'll let me give you another cup of tea?--I'm allowed to do that
much.  Well, I had my fortune told two days ago by a man at the
Pyramids.  He's supposed to be very clever.  He said I was going on a
journey into the desert with a man I loved; he spoke of some great
thing that was going to happen on the journey.  He described you
accurately.  He was really very funny--I wish you could have heard him.
He saw great wealth for you and some misfortunes."

Michael looked into her mischievous eyes.  "They talk a lot of rot."

"Then you don't believe in that sort of thing?  He saw sickness and
gold and love.  We were in the desert.  He saw gold."

"Hush," Michael said.  "You must forget all that."

"It was odd, wasn't it?  You know how I have urged you to go with me.
I never saw the man before, he has never seen you."

Again Michael said "Hush."  Again Millicent paid no attention to him,
beyond saying that it was funny that he would never allow her to talk
of her love for him, when he had often told her all about his religion
of love.

Again Michael said, "I refuse absolutely to be drawn into a discussion
upon the subject.  You are frivolous.  You and I know quite well that
yours is not love."

"Perhaps not your kind of love, with a big L.  But call a rose by
whatsoever name you will, it smells as sweet.  I can't quote, but you
know what I mean, and that true love without passion and passion
without love are both worthless.  Every fanatic has passion in his or
her love.  That is why they enjoy it--the scourging of the flesh, the
self-denial--the body enjoys this form of self-torture for the object
of its adoration.  There," she said, "I will behave like the dear
little innocent you first thought I was if you will come and see the
Pyramids at sunset."  The swift transition of her thoughts was typical
of her personality.

Michael's train did not leave the station for Luxor until nine-thirty.
He had nothing to do.

"If you'll come," she said, "I'll not do or say one thing to hurt you.
I'll be my very nicest--and I can be nice and good now, can't I?"

"Then come," he said.  "I've not been there since the 'Great Weeping.'"
He used the old man's picturesque term for the inundation of the Nile.

Millicent Mervill was no fool.  She meant to keep to her word, and did.
The evening's excursion proved a great success and restored Michael to
a more normal state of mind.




CHAPTER XI

When Michael got back to the camp there was so much genuine pleasure in
being one of the trio again that he felt that it had been well worth
the trouble of the journey, to be received back again so warmly and to
see unclouded happiness in Margaret's smile.  Her character was
transparently sincere.

How radiant she looked, as Freddy and she hurried to meet him!  A glad
picture for tired eyes.

"Things are 'piping'!" she said eagerly, when he inquired about the
"dig."  "Freddy has only been waiting for you to come back before he
clears out the last few days' debris from the shaft.  He has been
tidying up the site--it looks much more important."

Tired as Michael was after his hot journey, instinctively they turned
their steps to the excavation.  Things had certainly advanced greatly
during Michael's absence.  The deep shaft was almost cleared of
rubbish; the site was tidied up and in spick-and-span order.

Michael was very soon drawn into the feeling of excitement and
anticipation.  Freddy, he thought, looked tired and anxious, which was,
of course, only natural, for Michael knew that on his shoulders rested
the entire responsibility of the "dig" and that anything might happen
during the time they were waiting for the photographer and the Chief
Inspector.

Michael's imagination was ever too vivid.  He could see a hundred
plundering hands stretched out in the darkness to seize the buried
treasure.  He could visualize the poisoning of the watch-dogs and the
silent killing of the guards, and Freddy waking up to find that his
"pet tomb" had been burgled and robbed of its ancient treasures.

A good deal of discussion ensued between Michael and Freddy which was
above Margaret's head.  The approximate date of the tomb and a hundred
different suggestions and problems which were still beyond her
knowledge were gone into by the two Egyptologists.  The soothsayer's
predictions were not improbable; there were evidences which suggested
that the tomb was one of great importance.

"Let's get back to dinner," Freddy said.  "I scarcely had any lunch--I
couldn't leave the men.  I'm ready for some food."

Instantly they retraced their steps.  Margaret was humming softly the
air of some popular song.  Both she and Michael were always anxious to
administer to Freddy's wishes.

"It's topping to be back," Michael said.  "The smells in Cairo were
pretty bad.  This is glorious!"

They had almost reached the hut.

"We have only mummy smells here," Margaret said.  "But they get pretty
thick, as the store-room fills up with finds."  She looked round.
"Freddy, if I'd a little water, I could make the desert blossom like
the rose."  She sighed happily.  "As it is, it's 'paradise enow'--I
don't think I want it other than it is."

While they were at dinner, which, compared to their usual simple fare,
was of the fatted-calf order and one of Margaret's devising, Michael
told them of all that he had done in Luxor and Cairo, not keeping back
even his excursion to the Pyramids or his visit to el-Azhar.  Freddy
was greatly entertained by both episodes, the one as a strong antidote
to the other.

Michael had, of course, given but few details of either experience.
The mystic's counsel was not, he felt, suited for discussion and
certainly he had no wish to annoy Margaret by unnecessary remarks about
Millicent Mervill.

There was something in Mike's manner which assured Freddy that the
influence of the mystic had triumphed, that the beautiful Millicent had
not exercised her usual powers over his friend.

During the recital of his doings, Margaret met Mike's eyes frankly.
Hers were without questions or doubts.  She felt as Freddy did--that
the woman whom she so much disliked had not again come between them.
After all, the promise which she had given Michael, and which she had
kept, might have availed.

As Michael had never spoken one word of love to Margaret, she had, of
course, no right to expect him to behave towards her as if they were
engaged; and yet there was that between them which meant far more than
a mere formal proposal and acceptance of marriage.  Some influence had
brought them together in a manner which seemed outside themselves.
They had been the closest friends from the very first.  Her vision had
united their interests.

Of marriage as the definite result of their close, yet indefinite
intimacy, Margaret still never thought.  Mike and marriage seemed
qualities which separated like oil and water.  All she asked of fate at
present was the continuance of their unique friendship and the life
which she found so absorbingly interesting.  A year ago she had longed
to come to Egypt, but a year ago she had never dreamed that she would
become so thrilled with the excavating of a tomb which had been made
for a man who probably lived before Moses.  The human side of
Egyptology was being revealed to her.  She did not feel now as if her
brother was only going to discover a fresh mummy to put away in a
museum somewhere; he was going to break into the secret dwelling-house
of a man who had taken his treasures with him to live for ever in the
bowels of the smiling hills.  There are few tombs in Egypt as the
Western world thinks of tombs; there are eternal mansions, gorgeously
decorated and superbly built and equipped.  The abiding cities of the
Egyptians were the cities of the dead.

Margaret was living on the horizon of life.  Every breath of desert air
was like delicious food; every dawn and sunset stored her heart with
dreams; each fresh intimacy with Michael placed a new jewel in the
casket of her soul; every hour with Freddy was a privilege and a
reward.  In her veins the dance of youth tripped a lightsome measure.
Happiness made every moment vital.

During Michael's absence she had been down the valley and up the valley
and through its hidden ways; she was familiar now with the native life
in the camp and with the sights and sounds of Egypt.  The flight of a
falcon over the Theban hills seemed as familiar to her as the bounding
of a wild rabbit on the Suffolk wolds.  The desolation of the valley
had now become the Spirit of Peace, the Voice of Sympathy.  Her
jealousy was aroused at the very thought of another woman being
admitted into the privacy of the camp.  Being a true woman, it gave her
intense satisfaction to be the only one, to be the chosen companion of
her brother and of Mike.

They were always eager for her companionship.  If Freddy did not want
her, Mike did; if Mike had work to do which demanded perfect solitude,
she felt that Freddy was not sorry.  Yet they were all three such good
friends that more often than not they played together delightfully
childish games.  It was nevertheless rather a red-letter day for either
of the two men when circumstances so arranged it that Meg had to go off
with one of them alone on some excursion which combined business with
pleasure.

Margaret, womanlike, loved the nicest of all feelings--"being wanted."
She would have liked her life to go on for ever just as it was, her
society always desired by two of the dearest men in the world and her
days filled with this novel and extraordinary work.

But even in the desert, things do not stand still.  If they did,
temples could not have been buried and cities lost.  So after dinner,
when Freddy, like the dear human brother that he was, allowed Michael
and Margaret to spend some considerable time alone, the high gods took
in hand the affairs of these two human lives, lives which had been well
content to rest on their oars and drift with the tide.

Michael had had no prearranged desire to change the conditions of their
intimacy.  It was beautiful.  He had given no thought to himself as
Margaret's lover.  He had been content to be her partner in that
tip-toe dance of expectation and in that state of undeclared devotion
which is the life and breath of a woman's existence.

On the evening of his return to the camp he felt a new joy in
Margaret's presence.  Catching the sound of her voice in her coming and
going about their small hut was a delicious assurance of the happiness
that was to be his for some days to come.  She illuminated the place
and vitalized his energies.  Yet this deepened pleasure told him
nothing--nothing, at any rate, of what the gods had up their sleeves.

They were standing, as they had often stood before, on some high ridge
of the desert cliff which overlooked its desolation and immensity.
Margaret's face was star-lit; her beauty softened.  As Michael gazed at
her, he lost himself.

As unexpectedly to Margaret as to himself, his arms enfolded her.  He
told her that he loved her.

This confession of his feelings for her was so sudden, a thing so far
beyond his self-control and so inevitable, that Margaret made no
attempt to withstand it.  The beauty of it humbled her to silence; the
generosity of life and its gift to her bewildered her.  Two tears
rolled quickly down her cheeks.  Michael saw them and loved her all the
more tenderly.  Absurd tears, when her heart could not contain all her
happiness!  Meg dived for her handkerchief.  Michael captured her
hands; he took his own handkerchief and dried her cheeks, while
laughter, mingled with weeping, prevented her from speaking.

"I didn't mean to tell you, Meg," he said.  "It just came out, as if it
wasn't my own self who was speaking."

The humour of his words drove the tears from her eyes.  Still she did
not speak, but he saw the inference of her smile.

"I mean," he said, "that this other me has loved you all the time, the
me that couldn't help speaking, the me that recognized the fact ever
since I saw you at the ferry.  How I loved the first glimpse of you,
Meg!"

He drew her more closely to him.  "May I love you, dearest?"  He bent
his head; their lips were almost touching; he held her closely.  "First
tell me that our friendship is love."

His breath warmed her cheeks; she could feel the tension of his body.
Lost in his strength, Meg was speechless.  The greatness of her love
seemed a part of the wide Sahara.  The stillness and his arms were
lovelier than all the dreams she had ever dreamed.

His voice was a low whisper.  "Meg, do you love me?"  His lips had not
taken their due.

Meg's fingers encircled her throat.  "Love is choking me. . . .  I
can't speak."

Instantly Michael's head bent lower.  He kissed her lips, and then, for
the first time, Margaret knew what it was to be dominated by her
senses.  Thought fled from her; her lover's lips and his strength, for
he seemed to be holding her up in a great world of impressions in which
she could feel no foundation, were the two things left to her.

Michael realized that now and for ever there could be no going back.
Their old state of friendship was shattered.  His kiss had carried them
at a rate which has no definition.

Margaret returned his love with a devout and beautiful passion.  Eve
had not been more certain that Adam was intended for her by God.

"Meg," he said, "how do you feel?  I feel just a little afraid, I had
no idea that love was like this.  Had you?  You have suddenly become as
personal and necessary to me as my own arms or legs.  You were _you_
before--now you are a bit of me."

They were standing apart, facing each other, arms outstretched, hands
in hands.  Now and then the bewilderment of things made it very
compelling, this desire to look and look into each other's eyes, to try
to discover new characteristics born of their amazing confession.

"It's a tremendous thing," Meg said thoughtfully, "a tremendous and
wonderful thing."

"If we have only lived for this one hour, it's worth it," Mike said.
"To you and me it's certainly a tremendous thing."

Some lover's questions followed, questions which Margaret had to
answer, the sort of questions every woman knows whom love has not
passed over, questions which Margaret, with all her fine Lampton brains
and common sense, did not think foolish, questions which she answered
more easily and accurately than any ever set to her in college or
university examinations.  She answered them, too, with a fine
understanding of human nature.  Lampton brains were not to be despised,
even in the matter of "How, when and where did you first love me?"

She knew quite well what Michael meant when he said that he was a
little afraid.  She, too, felt a little afraid, just because things
could never be the same again.  Love in Egypt seemed to become Egyptian
in its immensity and power.  It was a part of the desert and in the
brightness of each glittering star.  She doubted if she could have felt
this tremendousness of love in England.  Had something in the power of
Egypt, in the passing of its civilization and religions, affected her
senses?  She could not imagine feeling, as she now felt, in Suffolk.
Here, in this valley of sleeping Pharaohs, in this eternal city of a
lost civilization, she had been transformed into another creature.

These thoughts jumbled themselves together in her mind, as they dawdled
back to the camp, the happy dawdling of lovers.

Suddenly Michael caught her in his arms and said, "Meg, how on earth am
I going to make you understand how much I love you?"

Meg read an unhappy meaning in the words.  "I shall understand," she
said.  "I think something outside myself will help me to understand."

He turned her face up to the stars.  It was bathed in light.

"You beautiful Meg, the stars adore you!"

Meg struggled and laughed.  "I'm so glad my face is all right, that you
like it, Mike."

Mike laughed.  "I shouldn't mind if you weren't beautiful, you know I
shouldn't, for you'd still be you."

Meg's practical common sense was not to be drugged by love's ether.
"Dear," she said happily, "don't talk rubbish!  As if you, with your
artistic sense and love of beauty, would have fallen in love with me if
I had turned-in-feet and a face half forehead, just because I was me!"

They both laughed happily.  Then Michael said, sadly and abruptly--his
voice had lost its confidence--"Why have I let myself say all this,
Meg?  What thrust my feelings into expression, feelings I scarcely was
conscious of possessing until I saw you lit up by the shining stars?  I
never, never planned such a thing."

"I know," Meg said.  "We neither of us dreamed of it when we left the
hut, did we?"

"I had a thousand other things to consult you about, to tell you," he
said.  "I have a thousand other things to do.  I have a mission to
fulfil before I speak of love.  It just came, it suddenly bubbled up
and poured over like water in a too-full bottle."

"Do you regret it?" Margaret said simply and sympathetically.  She was
not hurt; she knew what he meant; she knew that he had more than once
spoken of the single-heartedness of a man's work, the work which Mike
hoped to do, when he had no family ties, no woman's love to bind him,
to nourish and satisfy.

"Dearest--I don't regret it," he said.  "It was inevitable.  Something
else would have called it forth if the stars hadn't.  All the same, it
is of you I am thinking . . .  I had no right to . . ."

"To what, Mike?"

"I'm a drifter, Meg, and I'm not ready to be anything else--I can't be."

"I don't want you to be anything else."  Meg's voice and laugh were
Love.  Her sincere eyes were happily confident.

"People who 'walk on their heads' don't make fortunes, beloved."

"People who think the desert is 'paradise enow' don't need fortunes."

Michael pressed the palms of her hands to his lips.  "Dear strong
hands," he said, "are they willing to work with mine?"

"Oh, Mike," she said.  "I'm so glad, so happy!  It doesn't seem
fair--our world's all heaven to-night--I want others to have just a
little of it."

They listened to the silence.

Michael's thoughts were of his world-state, his religion of Love, the
closeness of God.

"Every star in the sky seems to know about our love," Meg said.  "And I
think the waiting silence has been expecting this."

"I know," Michael said.  "To me love seems to be crowding the valley
and flying down from the hills and searching the stillness.  Life's
become a new kind of thing altogether, Meg, we'll have to help each
other."

"That's just what I feel.  It's alarming to find yourself quite a
different human being in less than an hour, to have suddenly developed
unsuspected elements in your nature."  She laughed.  "I never thought I
could be such a complete fool, dearest."

Michael kissed her rapturously.  "Let's be big, big fools, beloved,
let's enjoy this thing that's come to us."  He paused.  Again he looked
troubled and serious.

"Why trouble?" Meg said.  "I know just what's in your heart.  You love
me and I love you, and I trust you.  You weren't ready for any
engagement--you never thought of marriage.  Well, let all that come in
good time if it is meant to be.  Let us be content with love for the
present.  It's surely big enough."  She sighed.  "It's tired me, Mike,
it's so enormous."

"But, dearest, I meant to talk to you about very different things.
Love just caught me. . . .  I was taken unawares . . . some look of
yours did it, or some trick of the stars. . .  I can't tell which.
Anyhow, it's done."

"Tell me," she said.  "All that you had meant to talk about.  It's not
too late.  We must be friends as well as lovers now."

"It was about my visit to el-Azhar in Cairo."

"Yes?" Meg said.  Her breath came more quickly.

"My old friend told me the most extraordinary things.  He had seen
visions."

Their eyes met.  Meg's held a question; they asked: "Had they any
connection with my vision?"

"Yes," Michael said to her unspoken question.  "He saw me on a long
desert journey.  I was often surrounded by a wonderful light--a light
which, he said, had come from one of God's messengers, who was never
far from me.  He said he saw the messenger of God always in the midst
of a great light, like the light of the sun, that he resembled no
mortal he had ever seen, or any king he had ever been shown in his
dreams."

Meg drew in her breath nervously.  "Had he ever heard of Akhnaton,
Mike?"

"No, never.  He is quite unread, totally unlearned and ignorant of all
except the teachings of the Koran."

Margaret's quick breathing showed her excitement.  Michael, too, became
nervous.

"He saw me always in the light of this great messenger, a light, he
said, which surrounded his figure with rays like the rays of the sun."

"Just as I saw him," Meg said.  "How strange!  How wonderful!"

"He spoke of trials and temptations and, strangest of all, of much
gold.  He saw the treasure very clearly and repeatedly--much fine gold,
he was certain of that."

"How are you to discover it?" Meg spoke dubiously.  Her practical mind
was fighting against the absurdity of the thing.

"He could not tell me.  In the desert I was to be led by a little
child--you know what that means?"

"Yes, a simple, a child of God."

They paused.

"Now the odd thing is," Michael said thoughtfully, "that when I went to
see Michael Ireton, he strongly advised me to go and find myself, as he
expressed it, in the desert.  He said, 'Cut yourself off from your
friends, from opposing influences, and think things out.  Go where you
are called.'"

"He meant Freddy's opposing influence?"

"I suppose so.  Freddy's character is stronger than mine, and we have
opposite views."

"Are you going?"  Meg's voice betrayed a new anxiety and sadness.

"I meant to."  His eyes spoke of his new reluctance.  "That was why I
had no right to speak--I really wanted to go."

"This must make no difference--it must help you."

"But I shall want to be with you--it's hard to go."

"If you stayed, you would be restless, dissatisfied."

"I know."  He laughed.  "I want both to 'walk on my head,' Meg, and
stand firmly on my two legs--my legs are for a home for you."

"And your head?"

"Oh," he said, "for anything that is upside down to what it is now, for
the total destruction of obsolete and effete monuments, for exchanging
new principles for those that are worn out with age, for showing that
fundamental truths are not made by empire-builders, that the world is
God's Kingdom, not man's, that God is the only monarch whose throne is
not tottering."

"Yes," Meg said.  "I suppose destruction must come before the building
up, your task of pulling down, of clearing out the corner-stones, of
cleansing the temple."

"I know," Michael said.  "It's the way with 'cranks.'  We all of us jaw
about destroying and offer no new plans for reconstruction."  He
paused.  "But it's rather like the problem of cleaning out a too-full
house--you can't really get rid of the dust unless you first of all
clear the whole thing out, empty it."

"You want to abolish so much, Mike."

"All the rubbish," he said.  "All the hindrances.  I want to let in
light."

"Beginning with kings," Meg said, tantalizingly.  The voice was
Freddy's.

"I've no rooted objection to kings, as human mortals," he said.  "I
suppose half the monarchs in Europe, and certainly our own included,
are very good men, very anxious for their kingdom's prosperity, if not
for their people's development.  It's the condition of affairs which
tolerates such an obsolete form of government.  If the king is merely a
picturesque figure-head, like the carved heads of Venus on a vessel's
prow, I'd have no objection, but a despotic and vain peacock like the
Kaiser, who turns his subjects into military instruments, in my opinion
wants destroying along with the other rubbish."

"But to go back," Meg said, "to your old friend in el-Azhar--do tell me
more about him."

"He's a splendid old warrior," Michael said tenderly.  "When you think
of what he's achieved, isn't he wonderful?  I wish you could see him."

"The force of will-power, of concentration," Meg said.  "I suppose he
has never thought of anything else all his life, but this one dream of
el-Azhar."

"That's it," Mike said.  "But what gives these Moslems that wonderful
power of mind-control?"  Mike paused.  "Now, here am I," he said.  "I
came out with you to-night meaning to tell you that I was going away."

"Oh," Meg said.  "Not yet--not until the tomb is opened?  Surely not?"

"No, not until the tomb is opened--I had no intention of that."

She sighed.  "That would be too awful."

Michael kissed her.  "How nice of you!" he said.  "You really wanted
me?"

"Of course!  I have visualized the opening of the tomb--you and I
crawling down the 'dig,' with Freddy waiting at the foot to show us his
treasures.  You couldn't have gone!"

"No," he said, "I couldn't.  But I wanted to tell you that I was going
soon after.  I was going for reasons that only my own heart understood.
And then what did I do?  I told you that I loved you!  I forgot
everything but you, dearest.  Before I knew it, I had spoken of what it
might have been wiser to keep hidden away in my heart, with all my
other mad dreams."

"But why, Mike?  I should have been so very unhappy, so wretched.  As
it is, I am just bursting with happiness.  I wouldn't change anything
for worlds--not one tiny thing!"

"If you are contented," he said, "and understand, then it may not have
been unwise, untrue to Freddy's trust in me."

"Oh," Meg said, "you dear, why, Freddy adores the very ground you walk
on!  He chaffs you, but he simply thinks no end of you."

"He doesn't want a drifter for a brother-in-law, if he's any common
sense in his head.  I'm the last husband he'd choose for his sister."

"But, Mike, how can you?"

"Yes, Meg, there are times when I don't 'walk on my head,' when I see
with Freddy's sane eyes.  It's what he'd call damned cheek of me to
speak of love to you."

"I'd have called it horrid if you hadn't."

"You delicious Meg, would you really?"

"Yes, I would, horrid and cruel.  I'd have imagined you really cared
for . . ." she paused and then went on tenderly, ". . . no, I won't say
it, Mike."

"Really cared!" he said.  "Why, you have taught me what that word
means.  You'll never doubt that?"

"No," Meg said.  "Not now.  I know this is new to us both.  I won't
doubt anything ever again."

"She was friendless," he said.  "And for some strange reason she
thought herself fond of me."

"What a very strange thing to feel!  I really can't understand it.
Fancy a woman feeling fond of a thing that walks on its head!"

"Don't laugh, Meg.  She does, or thinks she does."

Meg looked into his eyes.  "I'll never doubt you, Mike," she said, "if
you'll tell me, under these dear stars, which have made you confess
your love for me, that there has been no deep feeling on your side,
that there is nothing that matters between you."

Mike took her two hands.  "On my side, there has been nothing but
friendship, I swear it," he said.  "I never, never desired anything
else.  There has been nothing that matters."

"I'm so glad," Meg said.  "You're so high, Mike, so awfully high in my
love.  Your drifting is all a part of it.  I love you for all your mad
dreams and dear unworldliness, for your struggling and striving for the
highest.  I should hate to have to believe that you were less high than
I imagined."

"But I kissed her, Meg," he said, abruptly.  The truth was drawn from
him, as his confession of love had been, torn from him by some power
outside himself.  He hated giving her pain, and it had been scarcely
necessary if Margaret had been other than she was.

It had not mattered--yet if truth was beauty and beauty was God, and
his religion was that the kingdom of God is within us, how could he
hold it back, this deed which, little as it might seem in the eyes of
most people, had been for him a thing which did matter?

"You kissed her!" Meg said.  Something that was not love was now
bursting her throat.  Her voice was uncertain.  It hurt Michael like a
thrust from a sharp knife.

"Yes," he said.  "I kissed her, more than once."

"Her lips?" Meg asked.

"Yes, Meg, her lips."

"You kissed her as you have kissed me to-night?"

"Good heavens, no!" he cried.  "Meg, how could you think it?"

"Life is strange," Meg said, a little wearily.  "When everything seems
most beautiful, some ugliness shows its head . . . the light gets so
dim."

"Dearest," Mike said, "do you remember what you said on that morning
when we found each other again?  You said, 'Let's go forward; things
are explained.'"

"Yes, I remember," she said, and as she spoke happiness shone in her
eyes like a flame relit; "yes, I said regrets were foolish, I said I
understood.  But . . ." she hesitated; the thought of Mike's lips
pressed to any other woman's than her own stifled her.  She was his so
completely, that any other man's lips pressed to hers, except Freddy's,
would nauseate her.  Yet Mike had kissed Millicent.  Was it that night
on the terrace, or the evening at the Pyramids? she wondered.

"We have gone forward, Meg.  Millicent"--Meg shivered as he said the
woman's Christian name--"was splendid at the Pyramids, she really was."

Again Meg shivered.  Splendid!  How, she wondered, had she been
splendid?  Meg hated being an inquisitor, yet she had to know; it was
her right.

"Then it was not at the Pyramids that you kissed her?" she asked.

"No, no!" Mike said.  "Of course not!"  He looked at her in wonder.
"If it had been, I should not have dared to kiss you to-night."

"It's nice of you to say that, dear.  Oh, Mike," she said tenderly,
"you mean the world to me!  I shall grow older by years for each moment
that we don't trust one another!  I should have known, I should never
have doubted!  You've chosen a very jealous woman, Mike."

"If you'd gone off to the Pyramids with some one whom I disliked as
much as you dislike Millicent, I'd have been furious!"  He felt Meg
shiver.  He divined the reason; he would not let that hurt her again.
"You hate her, Meg," he said.  "Just in the way I'd hate a man
who . . ." he paused.

"Who what?" Meg said.

"Don't ask me," he said.  "I never forgot you for one moment when I was
with her at the Pyramids.  You kept close to me, dearest.  And the
other episode is past and forgotten--it was just a little bit of
vulgarity, Meg, nothing more."

"Since we made friends, there's been nothing between you that would
make your kisses to me a mere vulgarity, Mike?"

"Nothing," he said.  "And so far as I can help it, I will never see
Mrs. Mervill again."

Meg's eyes spoke her thanks.  His avoidance of the woman's Christian
name showed his sensitiveness to her feelings.  Speaking of her as
"Mrs. Mervill" put her pleasantly far away.

"I was weak and insincere--my kisses were really a dishonour to any
woman, and I hated myself."

While Meg admired her lover for refraining from the excuse which Adam
was not ashamed to offer His Maker, what was human in her longed to
make him denounce the woman she hated.  She had tried to provoke a
justification of his own conduct from his lips by telling her what she
felt to be the truth--that the woman had tempted him.

It was getting late; they turned towards the hut.

"We must go in," Meg said.  "Freddy will be wondering what has become
of us."  She turned swiftly and took Michael's hands in hers.  "Until
after the tomb is opened, let us remain as we were--I mean, don't let's
give Freddy any more to think about.  Isn't he the dearest brother in
the world?" she said.  "I love every glittering hair of his head!"

"Very well, you dearest woman," Mike said.  "Besides, we've only
confessed that we love each other--I've asked for no promise, Meg--I've
no right to.  Remember, you are free, absolutely free--this old drifter
isn't to count."

"Absolutely free!"  Meg laughed.  "Just as if words made us free!  Four
walls do not a prison make!  You know perfectly well that I am tied
hand and foot and bound all round about with the cords of your love.  I
can never be free again, never belong only to myself, as I used to do."

"And will you remember that whatever happens to me, Meg, it will be
just the same?"

She knew that he was referring to his mystical journey, his unsettled
future.

"It would be so heavenly," she said dreamily, "if we could be content
to sit down and be happy and just live for the enjoyment of each
other's love!"

"You'd despise me if I did."  He looked round at the eternal valley,
resting in the stillness of death.

"I suppose I should," Meg said.  "I suppose I want you to take up arms
for what Freddy calls your 'Utopian Rule of Righteousness,' your
world-state."

"I think we should both feel slackers, just enjoying ourselves
intellectually, dear, when we could, if we chose, let a few others into
the great kingdom of God.  You and I don't understand why they don't
all see it as we do, why they don't realize the things Akhnaton knew
three thousand years ago.  We wonder why they remain contented with a
religion of limited dogmas and theological forms.  They don't see the
obvious in their striving after doctrines.  They fail to see that God
is too big for their churches."

"You see these things," Meg said.  "I'm only creeping behind you."

"You see that if we understand God and give Him His proper place, He'd
rule us, His throne would govern a world-state.  His love would be the
law of mankind."

"I know," Margaret said.  "It's beautiful, it's what ought to be, if
poor mortals were not human beings."

"Mortals are the best things in God's kingdom--it's all been worked up
for their enjoyment and benefit."

"I know, dear, I know, but you and I are just you and I, and we have
just found love, and it is so wonderful, I want to enjoy it."

"Doesn't love make it all the more forcible, Meg?  The closeness of God
all the more certain?  The weaving of the threads of His beautiful
fabric all the more golden?--Akhnaton's great 'Lord of Fortune,' the
'Master of Things Ordained,' the 'Chance which gives Life,' the 'Origin
of Fate,' call it what you will--the power which brought us here, you
and I."

"And if we didn't follow that clear voice, Mike, whose rule is
righteousness, why should He allow it?"

"Do we ever deliberately do what we know to be wrong and not pay for
it, dearest?"

"But why does He allow it?  It's a mill, dearest--one can go round and
round, and round and round."

"And in the end," Mike said.  "It's just God, His prescribed rule, His
unfightable force."

      *      *      *      *      *      *

When the two lovers entered the sitting-room, Freddy was instantly as
conscious of the new aura which surrounded them as he was conscious of
the sweet desert air which clung to their clothes and bodies.  It came
like a whiff from a far pure world.

"How fuggy you are in here," Meg said.  "Dear boy, stop working."

"All right," he said.  "I was only waiting for you to come in."  Freddy
was not the sort to see anything which he was not meant to see.  If the
two lovers had anything to tell him, they would tell him.  Until then,
he would mind his own business.

"You go and have a smoke outside," Meg said.  "I'll put away all this."

"All this" meant the boxes of "finds" and the papers of plans and
figures which they had all been working at earlier in the evening.




CHAPTER XII

It was the dawn of the morning on which the tomb was to be opened.  Meg
could not sleep; the overseer's shrill whistle for the roll-call of the
workmen had banished her last hopes that a little sleep would come to
her before the exciting day began.

The clear whistle called the straggling figures together.  They were
still indefinite objects, moving white columns in the darkness which
heralds the dawn.  They were to begin work earlier than usual; Meg
could see no signs of the coming day in the sky.

She sprang out of bed, glad to begin some practical work to banish the
confusion of thoughts which had made her brain too active for sleep.
Before she had her bath or dressed, she felt that she must breathe the
cool, pure air outside the hut for a moment or two.

During the night her thoughts had been mastered by a consciousness of
the fact that after the great day, after the tomb was satisfactorily
opened and Michael had accomplished the necessary work in connection
with it which Freddy might demand of him, he would start out on his
desert journey.  She could not and would not hold him back.  Things too
delicate and indefinite to be described had gathered and accumulated,
strengthening his determination to leave the valley and start out on
his apparently objectless journey.  As the accumulation of atoms has
formed continents, so the accumulation of thoughts becomes a thing
which controls our destinies.

The treasure-trove of gold which had been hidden by Akhnaton the
Dreamer was now as real to Michael as the gold-mines in California were
real to the miners of the '49 rush.  He had visualized it over and over
again.  He was undaunted by the fact that many visionaries had seen
their King Solomon's mines equally clearly; but how many have reached
them?  He was satisfied that, though his journey might prove a complete
failure from Freddy's point of view, until he made it any work he tried
to do would be a more complete one.  There are treasures laid up in
heaven far beyond the value of rubies and precious jewels, and the
Kingdom of Heaven which is within us Mike was determined to find.

Meg had given her abundant sympathy, but advice she had none to offer.
The thing was beyond her, taken out of her hands; it belonged to the
part of Michael which she loved and admired but did not fully
comprehend--the superman.  Her practical common sense was her
stumbling-block; it held her with the chains of caution and the doubts
of a scientific trend of mind, which demands practical proofs before it
accepts any theory or idea.  Although she was influenced more deeply by
Egypt than she had ever imagined it possible to be influenced by the
unseen, or by atmosphere and surroundings, she still walked firmly on
her two feet.  Her momentary standings on her head were passing and
spasmodic.  She neither felt convinced nor unconvinced upon the subject
of Akhnaton's vision or upon the truth and reliability of the old man's
words at el-Azhar.  Suggestion is so often at the root of what appears
to be the supernatural.  Michael might have talked to the old man, as
he had often talked to herself, about the possibility of such a
treasure having been hidden by the King when he, Akhnaton, knew that he
was dying and when he realized that his new capital of Tel-el-Amarna
would not long survive his decease, that the priests of the old
religion would do all in their power to obliterate his memory and
teachings.  She knew that Michael was not the only person who held this
view.  He was not the originator of the theory.

Meg had never had anything to do with people who believed in visions
and the power of seeing into the future.  The occult had had no
fascination for her.  Until she arrived in the valley all such things
had come under the heading of charlatanism.  Her thoughts were
different now.  She had learned more; she had discovered that her
powers of vision might be limited to the very fine mental qualities of
which her family were so proud; she had found out that the sharpest
brains for practical purposes may be extremely blunt for higher ones.
Freddy and she could play with figures; problems which could be worked
out by practical methods were to them difficulties to be mastered by
hard work, and hard work was pleasure to the Lamptons; it was their
form of enjoyment.  They were not imaginative; they were combative;
they enjoyed a fight which usurped their mental energies.

In Egypt Meg had been given new eyes, new understanding.  There were
finer things than mathematical problems, things of the super-intellect,
infinitely more delicate and wonderful, to which neither she nor Freddy
held the key.  She felt like a child.  She was a child again, an
inquisitive child, crying out for answers which would satisfy her
awakening intelligence.  Her fine college education had been confined
to the insides of books.  She knew nothing whatever of the finer truths
which were every day being thrust upon her senses.  It was just as if
Freddy and she were watching a play from a great distance without
opera-glasses, while Michael had very powerful ones.  He could see
things beyond their horizon; he was in touch with people who inhabited
a world to which they could not travel.

Too often Michael's thoughts were divided from hers by continents of
space.  She was often alone.  She longed passionately to say to him
that she really believed in all that he believed in.  Her beautiful
honesty did not permit it.  Her limitations tormented her.  It was like
having a cork leg in a race.  If she could only get rid of her Lampton,
materialistic, common-sense nature, she would be more able to advise
and counsel her lover.  Poor Meg!  Thoughts like these had fought for
coherence all night.

She little knew that her nature was the perfect adjustment which
Michael's needed.  He came to her, not only as a lover, but as a tired
traveller in search of rest.  Her reasoning mind and cautious nature
gave him balance.  When he had been standing on his head for too many
hours together, Meg put him on his feet again.

This morning Meg needed putting on her own feet.  She was hopelessly
tormented with questions which she could not answer.  One minute
Michael's whole scheme ought to be discouraged; his belief in the
occult was a thing to be suppressed; it was dangerous and unhealthy.
The next, she found herself with energies vitalized and glowing over
the certainty that there must be truth in the idea, that there must be
some meaning in the repeated messages conveyed either by dreams or by
whatsoever one chose to call them.  Thoughts certainly had been
conveyed to him.

Then the glowing vision of Michael actually discovering the lost
treasure of Akhnaton would vanish and she would see him, just as
clearly, alone and ill in the desert, in lack of funds and abandoned by
his men.  She knew his casual methods of making practical arrangements
and his total disregard for his personal health and safety.

She was watching the coming dawn while her thoughts were creating
misfortunes and calling up unhappy visions of Michael alone in the
desert.  The old man at el-Azhar had spoken of temptations and
sickness.  If the treasure was a fact, then the sickness and temptation
were facts also.  But what were the temptations?  Did he allude to the
spiritual or the material man?

Suddenly her thoughts were obliterated, her self-inflicted suffering
wiped out.  She had no thoughts, no consciousness; for her nothing
existed but the luminous and wonderful figure of Akhnaton which had
formed itself in front of her.  At first her astonished eyes had seen
it dimly, then clearly and still more clearly.

Meg remained perfectly still.  She was too awestruck, too amazed, to
move or speak.  The vision became surrounded by light, by the rays of
Aton.  It was months since she had first seen it; now in the dawn, it
seemed as if it had only been the night before.  A sense of rest came
to her as she gazed at it.

  "Thy dawning is beautiful in the horizon of heaven,
  O living Aton, Beginning of Life!
  When thou risest in the eastern horizon of heaven,
  Thou fillest every land with thy beauty;
  For thou art beautiful, great, glittering, high over the earth,
  Thy rays, they encompass the land, even all thou hast made."


Meg listened intently to the words.  They were part of Akhnaton's Hymn
to the Rising Sun, the hymn which Mike had repeated to her.

She waited until the words were lost in the silent hour.  Every thought
of hers was known to the sad eyes, every longing in her heart to be
given power to speak was understood.  It seemed to come naturally to
her, the understanding of the needlessness for her to do aught but
listen.  The vision was her over-soul, her higher self, which
understood.

"You have delivered my message.  I have seen, I have approved.  The
Lord of Peace, the Living Aton, besides whom there is none other, has
brought Life to his heart.  The beauty of Aton is there."

It was of Michael the vision spoke.  Meg never doubted.  "His pleasure
is to do thy bidding," she said.  The words were the unstudied, simple
truth.

"I have seen, always I have guided, always I have prayed.  I have
revealed to him the Light which is Truth.  His work, which is the Love
of Aton, is in his heart.  The Lord of Fate has perfected it."

"I would have him go, and yet, because I am not fully in the Light, I
would have him stay.  All that is in my heart is plain to you--my
fears, my joys, my imperfect faith.  I ask for help; I am troubled."

"There is no poverty, no fear, for those who have set Aton in their
hearts; for my servant there is no danger.  Hearts have health where
Aton shines."

"But for me--how can I help him?"

"By the perfection of Love."

"But my love is imperfect.  It is not divine.  I fear for his bodily
welfare.  I cannot willingly offer him to the Aton of whom you speak.
I can only understand my own selfish love . . . it is human."

"You are the mistress of his happiness.  In my Kingdom, while it was on
earth, my heart was happy in my Queen and in my children.  The great
Lord and Giver of Light is none other than the Loving Father, the
tender husband, the devoted son.  There is none other than the living
Aton, whose kingdom is within us.  We are Love, we are Aton."

"Then my love is no hindrance?"

"God is Love, God is Happiness, God is Beauty."

There was infinite understanding and tenderness in the words, but Meg's
honesty was persistent.

"My love is not that sort of love, but it is very dear to me.  It is
selfish and human.  It is wrapped round with natural desires, my own
personal wants."

"Is there any love which is not of Aton?  Does He expect things other
than He has made?"

"I am in darkness; I have so many fears."

"Your soul is not shut off from that which it desires.  Your fears can
be turned to understanding; no forces of darkness can hold against the
powers of Light.  If you open your heart to the Living Truth, the
powers of darkness are disarmed, Aton is enthroned.  He is the sole
creator of all things created."

The sky was changing from a cold grey to the opalescence of dawn.  A
line of light was slowly appearing and widening on the horizon.  As it
spread and grew more distinct, the luminous figure became less clear;
the rays of Aton shone less vividly.  Akhnaton's spirit had come forth
from the Underworld to see the sun rise on the world he so passionately
loved.  This had been one of his most insistent and ardent prayers
while he reigned on earth, that after death his "two eyes might be
opened to see the sun," that "the vision of the sun's fair face might
never be lost to him," that he might "obtain a sight of the beauty of
each recurring sunrise."

Meg stood in an awed silence, her subliminal self alone conscious of
the grave, sad eyes, which were watching the splendour of the sun as it
came over the edge of the desert.  The rapidity of its uprising was
amazing.  It had burst the bonds of darkness with a strength and force
which resembled the triumph of a victorious army.  At its coming the
darkness was scattered.  Its quickly-spreading rays were driving back
the forces of the enemy.  With fine generalship it was following up the
victory with renewed attacks.

The form of the Pharaoh was only dimly visible.  Its luminousness had
disappeared.  It was a shadow in the light.  The prayer of all
Egyptians from time immemorial had been that they might each day "leave
the dim Underworld in order to see the light of the sun upon earth."
Akhnaton had prayed this prayer, which was ancient before his day.

Meg knew that his prayer had been answered.  Akhnaton, the King, the
passionate heretic, the visionary and the prophet, was seeing his
adored Sun rising over his kingdom.  His persistent prayers had been
granted, his desire realized.  His spirit had come forth to see the
sun's rays.  As he gazed at the sun, the years had rolled back.  Three
thousand years are but a span in the march of eternity.  He was alone
with his God, as alone as the Moslem figures who were prostrating
themselves to the ground.  He was enjoying the beauty of Aton in the
silent valley, which his footsteps had so often trod, the valley
overlooking the city which to him, in his manhood, became the city of
abomination and desolation, the city of false gods.

As the light of day flooded the desert, the figure became invisible to
Meg.  It seemed to melt into the golden air.  She felt that it might
still be standing there, quite close to her, only she could not see it.
Her powers were limited; the light concealed the figure.  Being
luminous, she had been able to see it clearly in the darkness, just as
she was able to see the luminous match-box which she always kept on a
table by her bedside.  She knew it was there, always shining, only her
eyes were unable to see its brightness in the daylight.  The figure of
Akhnaton might be near her still.  How clearly it had stood out in the
darkness, how brightly the rays of the sun had declared the symbol of
Aton!

Had it all been an optical delusion, born of her nervous condition?  Or
was it a dream?  Was she still in bed sleeping?  How could she prove to
herself that she was awake, that she had come out to see the dawn, that
she was standing in front of her hut and not asleep in bed?  In her
dreams, she had often dreamed that she was dreaming; she had often told
herself that her dreams were all dreams; she had often done things in
her dreams to prove to herself that they were not dreams.  If she
stooped to pick up some sand to prove that her feet were pressing the
desert, might not that, too, be a part of her dream?  What on earth was
there to prove the real from the unreal?

Now that she knew about Akhnaton and his beautiful religion, which is
the religion of all reasoning mortals to-day, and had read something of
his life and mission, was it not quite probable that she was creating
all that she had seen, that she was deceiving herself?  It was still
possible that she was dreaming.

With nerves unstrung and a beating heart, she saw Michael appear.  He
was in his early-morning top-coat.  He, too, had been greeting the sun.
He had made a hasty sketch of the first colours in the sky.

"Mike," Meg cried, in a tone of relief and anxiety.  "Mike, I want you,
do come here!"

The next moment Mike's arms were round her; her head was on his
shoulder.

"What is the matter, dearest?"

"The vision, Mike!  I have seen it again--it has been even more
wonderful.  Oh, Mike!"  A stifled sob came from Margaret's full heart;
the tension of her nerves was relaxed by the comfort of human arms, of
human magnetism.

"And you were afraid, dearest?"  He held her closer; his strength
nerved her.  Oh, welcome humanity!

"Afraid?  No--oh, no, it wasn't fear."

"What then, dear one?"

"I can't explain it.  If only you had been with me!"  She clung to him.

"I should not have seen him, Meg, it is not meant that I should.  Look,
darling, I have been near you--I was making a sketch of the sunrise."

Meg looked in wonder at the sketch.  There was no figure there; that
was the only point of interest it contained for her at the moment.

"It is not there," she said disappointedly; her voice expressed
astonishment.  "Then you saw nothing?"

"Nothing of what you saw."

"Then why does it come to me?  I am the very last person to understand,
to desire it."

"Dearest, the wisdom of God's ways is past our present very limited
understanding.  Why did He make the world as He did?  Why did He form
the mountains by the drifting of particles into the ocean?  Why did He
evolve the spirit of man from a source which has baffled science?  Why
does He let us know so much and understand so little?"

"I loved seeing him, Mike.  He talked to me.  I wasn't afraid while he
was there.  It's the wonder of it now that it's past, the strangeness;
something greater than myself gets into me when the vision is there."

"Consider the privilege, Meg, the amazing privilege!"

Mike's brain was working and wondering.  Why, oh why, had he not been
privileged?  Why had Meg again seen the Living Truth?

Meg divined his thoughts; her fervent wish was that he also had seen
it.  "Nothing further from fear ever possessed me, Mike, and yet now I
feel horribly unnerved.  If you hadn't come to me, I don't know what I
should have done.  The first time it was different.  I wonder why.  I
wasn't a bit like this, was I, dearest?"

"No, I don't know why you feel so differently this time.  What
happened?  Can you tell me, or would you rather wait?"  Mike recognized
her nervous state.

"I came out to see the sunrise.  I hadn't slept--I was thinking about
the opening of the tomb and of all that is to happen afterwards."  Mike
kissed her tenderly and understandingly.  "I was really feeling very
selfish and worldly; and anything but spiritual.  I was wondering if
your plans weren't too utterly silly, dearest, if, after all, we hadn't
got into a rather unreal and unhealthy way of looking at things.  I was
almost convinced that you ought to stop standing on your head.  Quite
suddenly the luminous figure, with the sunrays behind its head, stood
in front of me.  Its eyes were fixed on me with a full and wonderful
understanding of all that was in my heart.  I instantly knew that my
fears were understood, and the odd thing, now that I look back upon it,
is that I wasn't afraid.  The understanding seemed natural, the
understanding of my higher self.  It was only when the vision grew
dimmer and dimmer that I began to feel this silly nerve-exhaustion; it
was only then that I began to wonder and doubt."

"I'm not surprised, Meg--you're splendid.  Any other woman would have
fainted, I suppose."

"No, Mike, they wouldn't; once you've seen and understood, it is like
being born again, with fresh understanding, with fresh eyes.  There's
nothing more to be afraid of than there is in seeing death.  I was
terrified of death until I saw Uncle Harry die.  This is just the same
thing.  Your fear is forgotten, a new understanding possesses you.  My
only wonder is why I have never seen anything of the same sort before,
and now why, oh why, is it this strange figure of Akhnaton?  Why this
King who lived thirteen hundred years before we begin to count our
centuries?  I should so love to see Uncle Harry, and it is such a
little time since he went.  Why have I never seen him?"

"My darling, three thousand years are like the minutes spent in boiling
an egg when you dabble with eternity.  There is nothing to choose
between Noah and Napoleon; Moses and Mohammed are twins in point of
years."

"I know," Meg said.  "There is nothing so hard for a human mind to
grasp as the impossibility of grasping the meaning of infinity.  It
can't shake off its own limitations.  But all the same, if I was to
tell anyone except you, dearest, that I had seen and held a
conversation with the spirit of a Pharaoh who lived before Moses, what
would they think? what would they say?"

"The very few who stand in the Light would not be astonished.  Those
who are still completely earth-tied and glory in their ignorance would
scoff and call you crazy; but would they matter?"

"There was one thing he told me, Mike, which gives me great happiness.
He called me 'the mistress of your happiness,' he understood about our
love."

"That was his favourite name for his wife.  He was a devoted husband
and lover."

"Then he really understood?"

"What does Aton not understand, beloved?"

"But this was Akhnaton, Mike.  He said, 'my heart was happy in my
Queen.'  He said 'the great Giver of Light is none other than the
loving father, the tender husband, the devoted son, because there is
none other than the living Aton, whose kingdom is within you.  You are
Aton and Aton is you.  He is everything which He has made.'"

"That is exactly it," Mike said.  "You saw the figure of Akhnaton just
as people who lived in Syria saw the figure of Christ--God's
manifestation of Himself.  Of course He understood our love and our
happiness.  His bowels of compassion yearn for His children.  He is the
spirit of Aton--of God--as manifested by Akhnaton."

"You are to go, beloved, there is to be no holding you back.  I have
received my commission; it is to buckle on your armour.  Oh, dearest,
even if all this should be the fabrication of my own dreams, my brain,
it is not self-created--it has some purpose, some meaning.  God has put
it there."

"Everything has its meaning, Meg, nothing is too small to be
intentional."

"I am to help you by 'the perfection of my love,' and oh, Mike, it is
so imperfect, so pitifully imperfect, so pitifully human!".

"Pitifully, darling?  Why not beautifully human?"

"Because it thinks first of my own wants; my love makes me wish to keep
you all to myself, to prevent you going on this journey."

"The beautiful thing about Akhnaton's teachings, beloved, is the value
of happiness, the beauty of humanity.  In this capital he gave his
people wonderful gardens and decorated his public places and temples
with the simple joys of nature; he encouraged music and art and
everything that could give his people happiness.  He desired his people
to enjoy the world, he wanted them to see it as he saw it, a wonderful
kingdom, radiating with love.  He first taught the world that there
need be no sickness or misery if there was no sin.  Light disperses
darkness.  His was the purest and highest religion the world was ever
given until the mission of Jesus Christ.  The rays of Aton first
symbolized the divinity of God."

The voice of Mohammed Ali brought the lovers back to the practical
things of the hour--a hot bath and the necessity of dressing and eating
a good breakfast.  For the time being, the opening of the tomb had been
forgotten.  Indeed, Meg found it very hard to bring herself into touch
with all which had been until this morning the absorbing topic for days
past.

She had a number of household duties to attend to as soon as breakfast
was over--putting in order the room for the Overseer-General and
devising the menu for the day's food.  There were to be extra mouths to
feed--the photographer, the Chief Inspector and a few invited
fellow-Egyptologists who had been asked for the occasion.  It was
Freddy's day.

Before they parted to get ready for breakfast Meg said, "I suppose
Freddy will be quite lost to us until the hour arrives!  I wonder when
we shall be permitted to see inside it?"  She referred to the tomb.

"Not to-day," Mike said.  "At least, I don't expect so.  Perhaps
to-morrow.  Anyhow, we shall hear all that Freddy has to tell us
to-night or at lunch-time."

"Poor old Freddy!  I shall be relieved when the thing is over, when he
can settle down to regular work again.  There will be lots to do, won't
there?"

"You look tired," Mike said.  Meg's eyes were deeply shadowed.

"Do you wonder?  I've lived three thousand years in half an hour.  I've
been born again, so to speak.  I really feel only half here.  Oh,
Mike," she said, impulsively, "I wish I knew more!  I should so like to
quite believe, to understand.  I can never be the same again, not my
careless, young, old self."  She sighed.

"Do you regret it?"

"No, only I feel different, not quite so close to earth, lonely.  I
can't explain.  I wonder how Lazarus felt?  I know I'm alive, dearest,
and here with you, but--don't laugh or think me hysterical--in some
other way, a way I can't speak about, I feel as if I had been dead and
come back.  I've seen what no one else has, I've been where neither you
nor Freddy have been."

"With those whose existence is in 'the hills of the West.'"

"A cold tub will do me good, dearest."  Meg hurried off.

The sun was pouring its full wonder over the land.  The mystery of the
dawn was as if it had never been.  Egypt was bathed in light, the
fullest light that ever was on land or sea.




CHAPTER XIII

The great hour had arrived.  Margaret and Michael were on their way to
see the inside of the tomb, which had proved to be greater by far in
importance and splendour than even the Arab soothsayer had predicted.
It was, in fact, a tomb of unique interest, a tomb whose history was to
baffle the most expert Egyptologists.  Freddy had kept the wonder of it
a secret from Mike and Margaret.  He had told them practically nothing.
He wished to give them a surprise.

It had been inspected and photographed and all the necessary
formalities had been gone through, and now, after an admirably borne
period of waiting, Michael and Margaret were to be allowed to visit it.

Freddy was to await their arrival on the actual site, either the tomb
itself or outside it.

As Michael and Margaret hurried through the valley and climbed the
hill, leading down into the side valley which held the tomb, they spoke
very little to each other.  Their hearts were full of an intense
excitement.  Freddy's silence had prepared them for something unusual.

The sun was blazing like a furnace in the valley; a hot wind was
blowing from the Sahara.  Meg and Michael were too excited to be
conscious of their surroundings.  Their feet took them mechanically to
the scene of operations.

The tomb had been photographed before any modern had set foot in it.

Very hot and very excited, they at last arrived at its entrance, which
was guarded by two important-looking Egyptian policemen in modern
uniforms.  Until Michael and Margaret had satisfactorily proved to them
that they had come to assist Effendi Lampton and that they were members
of his camp, they were not permitted to go near the aperture.

Their identity being established, they at last began their descent down
the deep shaft into the tomb.  The hot air which ascended in puffs from
the depths below scorched their faces.  Meg felt stifled.  Still hotter
air met them as they continued their descent.

One of the Arab workmen helped Meg by going on in front and making
himself into a pillar for her to rest against when she lost her
footing.  Her feet slipped and stumbled in the soft debris, yet
pluckily she always managed to reach the stately Arab.  Each time she
reached him, she would halt and take a little breath, and with renewed
forces she would stumble on a few paces further.  It was a very
undignified proceeding and an exhausting one.

At last they reached the level of the tomb; they could safely raise
their eyes.  As they did so, Meg gave a sharp cry of surprise.  Never
in all the world had she imagined such a wonderful, wonderful sight.  A
glitter of gold and white and the gleam of precious stones and the
brilliant hues of vivid enamels, caught her eyes.  Freddy was holding
an electric torch in one hand, while with the other he picked up as
fast as he could from the ground the bits of carnelian and turquoise
and blue _lapis-lazuli_ which lay scattered at his feet.  Margaret
could see nothing clearly; after the darkness, things were all blurred.
But she recognized the friendly cigarette-boxes; they were there, and
Freddy was filling them as fast as his one hand would allow him.
Thousands of mummy-beads powdered the floor with bright blue.  The
white walls showed a wealth of colour in their paintings.

Freddy was in his white flannels; his modern athletic figure seemed
oddly incongruous.  He looked up as they appeared.

"Hallo, Meg!  Take care--stay where you are--don't move one step
further."

He instantly stopped his work and came to their assistance.

"You can't walk too softly or be too careful.  All these things are as
brittle as burnt egg-shells--the slightest jar may shatter them to
atoms."  His voice was full of eager happiness.

"Oh, Freddy," Meg said.  "It's too wonderful!  I never imagined such a
scene.  You darling!"  She hugged his arm.

"Wait a bit," Freddy said.  "There's better things to come.  I say,
Mike, keep your coat close to you--that's right.  Now, step like cats."

All three became silent as they picked their way gingerly; their
advance required a nicety and precision of step which permitted of no
talking or examination of the scene which enthralled them.

At last they reached an inner chamber, the actual tomb itself.  An
exclamation of amazement burst from both Michael and Margaret
simultaneously.  It certainly was an extraordinary scene which met
their gaze.

"Good heavens!" Mike said, while Meg caught hold of Freddy's arm.  She
was afraid lest their loud cry might shatter the vision before their
eyes.  Would it vanish with the coming of the light as the figure of
Akhnaton had vanished two mornings before?

A queen, dressed as a bride, in all the magnificence of old Theban
splendour, lay stretched at full length on the floor; her arms were
folded across her breast, her face dignified by the repose of death,
the repose of a Buddha, whose eyes have seen beyond.

This royal effigy was so magnificent, its colours were so untarnished,
that light seemed to radiate from the still figure.  Here the might of
royalty had defied time.

Meg and Mike saw nothing but the bridal figure; they had eyes for it
alone, its pathos, its dignity.

Freddy pointed to a coffin which lay near the queen.  It was empty; one
side of it had been smashed open.  A brown and shrivelled mummy, a
ghastly object, had fallen out.  It lay quite close to the brilliant
effigy.  Surely this was the skeleton at the feast?

Meg shrank back.  In the hot tomb a chill struck her heart.  This poor
brown object was the real queen.  Here time had triumphed.

She looked again, while Freddy held the torch nearer.  A vulture with
outstretched wings, the ancient emblem of divine protection, cut out of
flat gold, sat upon the forehead of the mummy.  Its left claw had
slipped into the empty eye-socket.  A row of long white teeth gaped
threateningly up to the roof.  The lips had dried and withered until
they had become as hard as brown leather.  Alas for human vanity!
Those lips had once been a lover's, those lips had once responded to
human caresses and desires!

Meg's flesh shrank.  It was horrible.  It was wrong to pry upon this
pitiful object which centuries had hidden from man's sight, this
humiliation of royal power.  Nothing could have illustrated more
vividly the mockery and the futility of human greatness.  The ghastly
cheeks, covered with something which had once been human flesh, the
menacing teeth, the embalmed skull, sickened Meg.

For relief she turned her eyes once more to the sublime effigy, to the
waiting bride.  Her chamber had been furnished with the lavish
indulgence of an ardent bridegroom.

Michael was standing by Margaret's side.  Her hand caught his; human
contact was essential.

The coffin which had once held the mummy had rested on a beautiful
wooden trestle, which had been covered with a golden canopy.  The legs
of the trestle had given way, probably with the weight of the coffin,
for the wood had become as brittle and dry as fine egg-shell.  With the
fall the mummied body had rolled out and landed on the ground.

This, Freddy conjectured, was the explanation of the apparent
desecration of the tomb.

After they had looked at all that Freddy could show them until more
work had been accomplished, at the two figures which occupied the tomb,
the one so abject and distressing the other so magnificent and
romantic, and at the furniture which appeared to Meg to have been made
only the day before, in spite of Freddy's warning that a breath of cold
air would disperse it before their eyes, he told them that "time was
up."

Meg's astonishment had increased with the examination of every
object--the carved wooden armchair, which appeared to belong to the
best Empire period; the exquisite wedding-chest, of lacquer, the blues
and greens of its floral decorations still daringly brilliant and
vivid--they were far brighter and more perfect than any decorations
which a faker of antiquities would dare to perpetrate.

"But, surely," she said at last, when they had come to the end, "this
furniture's just pure Empire?  Look at it, Mike."  She pointed to the
exquisite armchair, an object too beautiful and rare for mere human
forms to rest in; then she made him examine the couch.  A portion of
its fine cane seating had given way.  Had a ghostly form sat on it?  "I
thought the French copied their Empire furniture from ancient Greek
models?" she said.

"Well, if they did, here we have it in all its perfection," Freddy
said.  "In Egypt you'll find the originals of more than Empire
furniture.  The thing is, where did the Egyptians get their models
from?  None of the Louis's ever gave their Pompadours, nor Napoleon his
Josephine, anything as beautiful as that."  He pointed to the casket.

"And the very air which keeps us alive will destroy these," said Meg.
"It's odd, the way which things that have existed intact for three
thousand years without air will be killed by it!"

"Have you any definite ideas about that figure?"  Mike referred to the
mummy.  "Whose is it?"

"The whole thing is very bewildering.  The tomb obviously hasn't been
plundered, for nothing of any value is missing, and yet, as you can
see, some of the gold wrappings have been torn from the mummy, certain
things have been defaced on the walls--the tomb is not as it was when
the body was first laid here."

"No," Mike said.  "Obviously not.  The entrance has been tampered with
and those outer walls built; and look at all that debris in the shaft.
Yet, as you say, the obvious things of intrinsic value have not been
removed."

Meg pointed to a recess in the wall; it still held the canopic jars.
Their lids were splendidly formed out of head-portraits of the queen.
Meg knew their meaning, their use; they held the intestines of the
dead.  The Biblical expression, "bowels of compassion," always came to
her mind when she looked at canopic jars.  These jars had their
significance.

A very good significance, too, she thought, for certainly our bowels
are highly sensitive organs, responding and acting in complete sympathy
with our mental condition.  And who can say for certain where our
compassions are seated, our sensibilities and sympathies?  Why not, as
the Egyptians thought, in our bowels rather than in our brains?
"Joseph's bowels did yearn upon his brother Benjamin."

"Then you have no idea who the queen was?" Meg said.

"Not yet," Freddy said.  "But we shall know.  No Egyptian could enter
into his future abode without his name.  It was always plainly and
repeatedly written on the embalmed mummy.  His identification was
absolutely essential."

"What a help to Egyptologists!" Meg said.

"Probably her name will be written on these golden wrappings and on the
scarabs, if we find any.  Nothing has been done yet.  This precaution
of the ancients, in the matter of names, has, as you say, saved us
endless work.  If plunderers haven't obliterated the name and stolen
the scarabs and other marks of identification, we generally discover
who it is."

Meg sighed.  "Is it just ordinary desert and daylight still up above,
Freddy?  I can't believe it.  We seem to be back in the Egypt of the
Pharaohs down here."

They all looked silently again at the wonderful sight, far more
wonderful than words can suggest--the power of Egypt, the mystery of
death.

"The soothsayer was quite true," Meg said.  "His words were more than
true."

"Yes," Freddy said, "more than true.  And the odd thing is that he said
what I thought was a lot of rot about a 'bridal figure,' its splendour,
its brilliance.  He visualized it almost correctly.  He said, too, that
there would be great trouble for us in the work; he saw difficulties
and errors and wrong judgments.  Nothing was clear, beyond the
brilliance of the figure and the objects.  I wonder if he will be right
in that as well?"

Michael and Margaret looked at each other.  Obviously Freddy had been
influenced by the accuracy of the visionary's predictions.  His voice
was free from scoffing.  He owned that it was extraordinary--the manner
in which the man's words had come true.  Neither Meg nor Michael made
any remark; they held their tongues in patience.

"There is certainly plenty of gold," Freddy said, "and jewels and much
fine apparel.  I hope we shan't encounter the great difficulty he
expects, as regards the historical problems and arguments it may open
up.  He predicts that the opinions of the learned Egyptologists will be
cast out; their judgments will be at fault.  What at first will appear
obvious and clear will not be the lasting truth."

"How odd!" Mike said.  "Was he very pleased to hear of the correctness
of his predictions so far?"

"I haven't told him."

"Not told him?"

"No, it's wiser not.  I've done my best to keep the astonishing
richness of the tomb from the ears of the natives.  No one has been
inside it but the Chief Inspector and the photographer and you two.  No
words have been spoken--you must not talk."

Meg's heart bounded.  It was delightful to be one of the privileged
few, to be trusted and accepted as one of the school.  She felt like a
great explorer who had set foot in untravelled country.

"If we stand here, without moving," she said; "quite, quite still,
mayn't we stay for a little bit longer?  I'm so full of wonder and
amazement, Freddy.  I can't begin to think intelligently or see things
separately--everything is a blurred mass of white and gold and blue and
priceless objects."

"No, Meg, I'm sorry--I can't let you stay.  You see, I must take this
light with me and get on with picking up those small objects.  You'll
see all of them to-night.  And with out the light you would be in total
darkness--real Egyptian darkness."

"That's the thing that beats me.  Freddy, how do you solve the
problem?--had they electric torches, or were these tombs only built for
supernatural eyes to enjoy?"

"They certainly didn't use flares or torches in tombs, as the early
Christians did in the Roman catacombs, for there's no trace on the
walls of dirt or smoke as there is on the low walls of the catacombs.
There is absolutely nothing to tell us how they lighted these vast
buildings up, how they even introduced sufficient light to paint them
by or to build them.  Look at the minuteness of these figures."

"Surely they never built all these wonderful tombs and took the trouble
to paint them with the brightest colours if they were never again to be
seen with mortal eyes?  I can't believe it."

"So far we don't know.  Perhaps the _Ka_, the part of a man who lived
for ever in his eternal home, had supernatural powers of sight.  The
joys were for him.  But how did they paint them in the darkness?"

"Is that fact ever alluded to?"

"No, the _Ka_ is treated in a perfectly human and natural manner.  All
his pleasures were material ones.  It's very odd--but we'll discover
the secret yet."

"If they had some secret form of wireless telegraphy, they may just as
well have had some secret means of producing light, don't you think?
You've not discovered their wireless code, yet, have you?"

"No, that's still a secret.  And they certainly used no apparatus for
electric light, if they knew of it.  There are no wires in the tombs."
He laughed.  "You know, there is a lift in the Forum at Rome; it was
used for bringing the beasts up to the arena from underground cages.
It is in use to-day, I believe."

"We've not discovered one hundredth part of what they had or hadn't,"
Meg said.  "They probably used radium to cure diseases."

"The Etruscans had dentists who knew the use of gold for stopping
teeth--we know that."

"Yes, I've seen a skull with gold-stopped teeth in the Etruscan Museum
at Rome."

They had reached the beginning of the steep climb which was to take
them up to the open desert.  Freddy left them with the assurance that
he would come back to lunch.  The two policemen were to be responsible
for the guarding of the tomb.  If anything was disturbed, they would be
held to account.

When Margaret and Michael at last reached the open desert, Meg flung
herself down and gazed up into the sky.  It had never seemed so blue
and beautiful before.  The clear air rushed into her lungs.  Oh, the
sweetness and the dearness of the daylight and the real world!  The joy
it was to press her body close, close to the desert!  She put her face
down to it.  Nothing in all her life had ever been so reassuring and
comforting.

Michael was seated beside her.  The world was so wide and open and
bewildering; he felt giddy, stupefied.  Surrounding them was the
ever-wonderful light of the desert, the yellow sands and, in the
distance, the masses of moving figures, working like busy insects at
the clearing away of the tomb-rubbish.  Native chants and the noise of
picks and spades shovelling up the debris broke the stillness.  Life
was just as it had been for the last two months.  The desert was as it
had been before the tribes of Israel followed Moses.  Down below them,
under the golden sand, in the dark bowels of the earth, Freddy was
still picking up precious jewels and packing them into the
cigarette-boxes, the effigy of the royal bride still lay in all her
Pharaonic splendour.  She was there, underneath them, waiting and
waiting as she had waited for three thousand years for her heavenly
bridegroom.  And still by her side lay that shrivelled, withered
corpse, the real queen, for whose pride and honour the vast underground
temple had been built.  The brown mummy was the thing which mattered,
the real owner of the costly home.

Freddy, in his white flannels, with his modern mind, was alone with
these two forms, alone and shut off from the embracing, loving light of
the desert.  It was not a quarter of an hour since Meg and he had been
there; now they were as far away from the withered mummy and the
resplendent bride as though they had travelled across the breadth of
the world.

His mind went back to the time before the excavating of the tomb was
begun, when it had seemed absurd to suppose that all this splendour lay
under their feet.  It seemed to him now as though the whole of Egypt
might be honeycombed in this subterranean manner.

Meg still lay embracing the sun-warmed sand, rejoicing in the dazzling
sunshine.

"It makes one feel very humble," she said at last.  "So utterly,
utterly unimportant.  It doesn't seem as if it much matters what
happens, not even to our love, Mike."

Mike raised his face from his hands.  "I know," he said.  "It is
absolute devastation, nothing more or less.  I'm shattered, Meg."

"It seems hardly worth while trying to do anything.  Tomorrow we'll be
like that.  It's so difficult to explain, except that it's just wiped
out my eagerness, it's made our own precious happiness seem absurd and
hollow, human beings ridiculous."

"Dearest, I understand, I feel the same," Mike said.  "All that down
there"--he stuck his stick into the sand--"illustrates a bit too
plainly the things we want to forget."

"It shows us the absurdity of what we think are the things that matter.
It's really destructive to anything like worldly fame and ambition.
Those poor shrunken cheeks, those poor leathery lips, those poor, poor
diadems and jewels!"

Mike let her ramble on.  It was good for her to give utterance to her
incoherent thoughts.

"They are so different when you see them in a museum," she said.
"They're impersonal there.  They don't hurt one's self-importance."

"In Cairo they belong to a number and a glass case," Mike said.  "They
lose their individuality."

"Here they are a part of Egypt, that ancient, undying Egypt!  You and
I, like those dogs, Mike, won't have even bones to record us after
three thousand years.  Our bowels of tenderness will not lie intact in
alabaster jars!  Oh, Mike, take me in your arms!  I want humanity, I
want the things of to-day, I want all which that mummy has ridiculed!
I hated it, Mike!  I love life and your love!  I want to forget that we
are here to-day and gone to-morrow, mere human gnats."

Mike held her close to his heart.  Meg could hear it beating.  Oh,
beloved humanity!  Oh, dear human flesh and blood!

"That's lovely, Mike--that's you and me!  That's our certain human
love, our happiness!  It is worth while, and it's not going to be like
the running out of an hour-glass while an egg is boiling!  It's going
to last for ages and ages, isn't it?  Say it is, Mike!"

"Yes, beloved."  Mike kissed her hands.

She drew them away.  "Don't kiss them, Mike.  I feel as if they will be
dried skeletons by to-morrow, and as if your lips, dearest, will have
shrunk and shrunk right back until your teeth gape out of your hideous
brown skull up to the blue above.  Do you wonder that Akhnaton prayed
so ardently that his spirit might come out and see the sun?"

Meg's head was buried in her hands.  She was visualizing again the
wonderful scene, which had taught her the mockery of all things which
had formerly appeared so precious and important.  It seemed to her at
the moment that to sit down in the desert under the blue sky, and there
wait for death, was the only thing to do.  Nothing really mattered.
Eternity enthralled her.  Her happiness with Mike was but the swift
hurrying of a white cloud across a summer sky, the work of the
Exploration School a mere illustration of worldly vanity.  In the great
chaos which possessed her soul there was no light to comfort her.  In
looking into the past she had unexpectedly seen into the future.  She
had beheld the scorn and callousness of eternity.

Oddly enough, it was Michael who helped her to pull herself together
and turn her thoughts to practical things, to the needs of the day.
His more mystical nature, his familiarity with the mythology of Egypt
and other occult subjects, had in a measure prepared his mind for the
things which had burst suddenly upon Meg's practical nature.  He had
been subconsciously prepared for the tomb to be one of unusual
importance.  The soothsayer's prediction had not been mere charlatanry
to him.  His secret thoughts were so constantly focussed on what is
termed the superhuman, that Meg's wonder and horror formed only a minor
part of his emotions.

A thousand thoughts had flashed through his mind when he first saw the
amazing display of jewels and faience and gold, the resplendent queen,
whose royal magnificence had mocked at time.  The inexhaustible wealth
of buried Egypt forced before his eyes the treasure of gold of which
Akhnaton had spoken, that imperial wealth which he had buried behind
the hills of his fair capital.  He felt convinced that it was there; he
felt convinced that his friend in el-Azhar had seen it, just as the
Arab soothsayer had seen the royal effigy dressed as a bride.

Mike had little conversation even for Meg.  His mind was harassed and
absorbed.  The fresh impetus which he had received was pounding like a
sledge-hammer at his natural and supernatural forces.  His natural self
was the devil's advocate, and a very able one.  It argued against the
super-instincts which led him to the treasure.  It made him practical.
It made him, as Freddy would have declared, "sanely critical of the
insane."  It admitted the apparent folly of the thing into which he was
drifting.

He pulled Meg up from her seat on the sand.  He realized that her
domestic duties were what her nerves needed; they had lately been
greatly taxed, first by her vision of Akhnaton and now by the
excitement of their entry into the tomb.[1]

A lover's kisses and strong human arms had done much for Meg.  She had
a horror of hysterical females.  She pulled herself together and
determined to be practical.  Only a few moments before she had felt an
almost uncontrollable desire to burst into tears.  How thankful she was
that Mike had saved her from the humiliation!

But how in the world was she going to bring herself back to the paltry
things of every day?  How was she ever again going to feel that life
was real and actual?

She entered the hut with unwilling feet and troubled mind; for some
unaccountable reason its atmosphere depressed her; she wished to avoid
it--she felt a curious apprehension of bad news or of coming evil.  At
the same time, practical work would be beneficial.

As they came in together, Mohammed Ali greeted Michael with the news
that "One lady and one gentleman has come, very long time they wait.
Lady she stays inside, gentleman he go up the valley."

Instantly life was real again, and Meg a living, angry woman.  "She"
who stayed inside could only mean Mrs. Mervill.  The tomb was
forgotten, as was the royal bride.  They belonged to the past; the
present was all-engrossing.

The present hour was the living reality and Michael, her lover, and her
own love were the things that mattered, the woman in the hut the one
brilliant vision.  Life was vital, urgent.  A gnat's life would be long
enough if it was to be passed with the woman whom she knew, in the
coming struggle, would fight with tools which she, Meg, would not dare
or deign to touch.  As vivid as her vision of the tomb was her memory
of Millicent Mervill's beauty.  She could see it illuminating their
desert hut; she could feel it eclipsing her own less vivid colouring as
the sun had eclipsed the rays of Akhnaton.

Mike looked at her.  Meg's cheeks were pale, her eyes deeply shadowed.
He hated the woman inside the tent.  What had she come for?

A silent kiss separated them.  With the kiss Meg's heart took courage.
It left no room for fear.



[1] The description of the interior of this tomb is taken from various
reliable accounts of the interior of the tomb of Thiy.  As Queen Thiy
was the mother of Akhnaton, her tomb must have been discovered before
the events described in this story, otherwise they could not have known
that Akhnaton's mummy had been found in his mother's tomb.

When the tomb was first examined, the mummy which had fallen out of the
coffin was supposed to be that of Queen Thiy.  The light of
after-events and of scientific research have proved that the mummy was
that of a young man of about twenty-five years of age.  The conclusion
is that Akhnaton's body was brought from his original burying-place
near his "City of the Horizon," and placed in his mother's tomb in the
Western Hills.

The name of Akhnaton had been erased from the coffin, but it was still
readable on the gold ribbons which encircled the body.




CHAPTER XIV

When Michael entered the sitting-room of the hut, Millicent Mervill was
reading one of Freddy's French novels.  There had been plenty of time
for her to powder herself and cool down and settle to her liking her
dainty person.  She looked as fresh and cool and pink as a bough of
apple-blossom.

She greeted Michael with a charming mixture of friendliness and
discretion.  She had brought a friend up the valley, to see all that
tourists had to see.  He had been put into her hands by a letter of
introduction from friends in America.  They had seen all that her
health would allow her to see, on such a hot day.  She had noticed
their camp in passing up the valley and could not resist visiting it on
her way back.  Might she ask for an hour's rest from the sun?  Her
friend was going to call back for her on the return journey.

"I knew you wouldn't mind," she said.  "And I'm not going to stop your
work, or bother you."

"I'm not busy," Michael said--"at least, not for the moment."  His eyes
avoided Millicent's, which seemed to him bluer than usual; but his
voice was less cold.  His first greeting had been curt and almost
impatient.  Millicent was evidently wiser and less difficult; she was
the same Millicent who had behaved so delightfully at the Pyramids.
When she was like that he was glad to be nice to her; he was almost
pleased to see her.

As their conversation continued--it was mostly about the tomb and its
great importance--a subconscious thought that she had come to the hut
for some reason which she was not divulging forced itself more and more
strongly on Michael.  He became convinced of it; she seemed so
unusually contented and satisfied with the plan of confining her visit
to a short rest in the hut and their conversation to "the things of
Egyptology," that even Michael was suspicious.  She was "_douce comme
un lupin blanc_," as she expressed it to herself later on.  Her usual
insistence had vanished.  She treated Michael as a friend, with the
proper touch of intimacy.  This was when they were alone.

When Margaret came into the room, she hardened.  Naturally Margaret
invited her to stay for lunch.  She was Michael's friend.

"It is always a very light meal with us," she said.  "But such as it
is, you are welcome to share it."

"Freddy likes his proper meal at night," Michael said.

"Thanks ever so much," Millicent said; she had noticed the coldness of
Margaret's voice.  "I'd love to stay--that's to say, if it won't really
be giving you any trouble--you're looking fagged."  She turned to
Michael.  "What have you been doing with her?"  Millicent spoke as if
she really cared.  "You're too young for such tired eyes, for these
lines," she touched Meg's eyes and pulled open the corners.  Meg's
shrinking gave her satisfaction.  "Don't let Egypt ruin your looks, my
dear--a woman is only half a woman when her beauty fades; she's only a
woman in the eyes of one half of mankind while it lasts."

"Do you think so?" Meg said.  "I dare say you're right, but when one is
quite young one never stops to consider these things.  As you get
older, I suppose you do."

The hit went home; the girl had claws.

"We are only as young as we look, are we not?  These few weeks have
ragged you to pieces."

"I don't mind," said Meg.  "It's been well worth it.  You may as well
get ten years into ten weeks as ten weeks into ten years.  I've been
gobbling up life, years and years of new experiences and sensations in
these last few weeks."  Meg meant no more than her words would have
conveyed to any sweet-minded woman, but Millicent Mervill put her own
interpretation on them.  Margaret was no mean fencer; she could hit
back as well as parry strokes.

"You've certainly said good-bye to conventions, my dear.  I admire you
for taking your life into your own hands."  The blue eyes searched
Margaret's; they spoke of a hundred things which made Margaret long to
throw the tumbler which she was placing on the table at her golden
head.  Margaret was neither ignorant nor a fool; Millicent's eyes
explained her meaning.

"One has to say good-bye to conventions in the desert--nothing can be
too simple here.  That's why Western fashions look so grotesque, our
ideas of becoming garments so ludicrous."

Meg had ignored the innuendoes.  Her eyes rested on Millicent's absurd
shoes and fashionably-cut white serge coat and skirt--a charming suit,
but out of place in the hut.

"Is your brother still here?" Millicent asked the question with a
beautiful insouciance.  She was perfectly well aware that he was
personally superintending the excavation of the tomb.  Her words were
meant to annoy.

"Here?" Meg said.  "In the hut at this moment, do you mean?  No--he is
busy."  Meg's eyes flashed with anger.

Michael was silently enjoying the battle of words and eyes which was
taking place between the two women.  The very atmosphere was charged
with antagonism.  He was delighted to find that Margaret held her own.

"No--I meant, is he still in the valley, or are you two alone here?
How deliciously romantic!"  Millicent sighed.  The sigh was more
suggestive than her words.

"My brother is in the tomb at this moment," Meg said.  "You seem to
have very extraordinary ideas of the ways of excavators"--she had
flushed to the roots of her hair--"of the behaviour of ordinary English
people."

"What was the desert made for, but freedom, my dear?  If one can't live
in this valley as one wants to, where can one, I should like to know?"

"We are living as we like," Meg said.  "Your ideas of freedom may not
be mine.  Our interests lie apart--our ideas of enjoyment are, as far
as I can understand, poles apart."

"A foolish waste of time, my dear, that's all I can say.  May I smoke?"

Michael handed her a box of cigarettes; he noticed the exquisite
refinement of her hands as she picked out a cigarette, her
brightly-polished nails.  "Thanks, dear," she said, as she lit the
cigarette from the match which he held out to her--the "dear" was for
Meg's benefit; for as their eyes met hers were full of genuine fun and
mischief.

"I must tease her," she said, in a low whisper; Meg had gone to the end
of the room.  "I love shocking those dark eyes--I enjoy making her hate
me.  It's only fun."

Meg's heart was beating.  How dared she call Michael "dear"?  How dared
she intrude herself uninvited upon their simple life?  Her beauty, her
foolish feminine clothes, angered her.  She hated Millicent's fine
skin, which was, even in the desert heat, as poreless as a baby's.  It
was a wonderful skin for a grown person, let alone for a woman of
Millicent Mervill's age.  Meg thought of the dried mummy's lips.  One
day that pure soft flesh, which held the tints of a field daisy, would
be more revolting to look at if it were unearthed than the skin of the
three-thousand-year-old queen.  If Meg had possessed a wishing-ring, it
would not have taken long to effect the inevitable change.

The impudence of the woman maddened her.  She knew that she could not,
even if she had wished to, behave as she did.  Millicent did exactly as
she liked, as the impulse of the minute suggested.

Meg wondered how she had passed the time while they were at the tomb.
Had she examined any private object in the hut?  Had she interviewed
the servants?  She was quite capable of doing it.

She heard her whisper to Mike.  Her own sensitiveness now drove her out
of the hut; if they wished to speak in whispers, let them speak.  She
stood sullenly outside the door.

Why did not some strong man strangle women like Millicent Mervill?  Why
had not she herself the courage to tell her what she thought of her?
Probably Millicent would only smile and show her perfect teeth--they
always made Meg furious, because they were even better than her own,
and hers were, so she thought, her strongest asset--and say, "Poor
girl!  You are a little overtired"; or she would say, "You have so much
to make you happy, dear, and I have so little.  Don't be unkind--I only
long for sympathy."

Millicent's moments of self-pity were mean and contemptible and yet
they were effective.

The only thing to do was to leave the two alone, to trust Michael and
go about her business.

Presently she heard Michael say: "Well, I'll leave you to rest until
lunch-time--I can't idle while Freddy is working like a nigger.  You'll
be all right, I know, with your book and a cigarette."

Margaret slipped round to the back of the hut; she did not want to
speak to Michael; she was thankful that he had left Mrs. Mervill, but
his voice had been too kind, too nice.  Meg did not know what she would
have liked him to do, what he could have done otherwise.  She only knew
that the niceness of his voice annoyed her.

When the overseer's whistle for the workmen to "down picks and spades"
sounded and the time was ripe for Freddy to appear, Margaret sauntered
off to meet him.  When she saw him coming she hurried towards him.  How
she loved him!

When they met she said, "That cat Mrs. Mervill is here.  Oh, Freddy, I
hate her!"

Freddy laughed.  Millicent Mervill, with her extreme modernity and
virile passions, was so far removed from the thought of the tomb, from
the brown mummy, whose golden ribbons he had been examining; his
sister's annoyance was so utterly unlike her mood of the earlier
morning!  He had never seen Meg so moved as she had been in the tomb.
He felt a little relieved that a very human and irritating influence
had suddenly thrust itself across her path.  Meg was getting too
enthralled in Egypt.  These thoughts flashed through his mind.

"Good old Meg," he said tenderly.  "The fighting Lampton's roused, is
it?"

"Yes," Meg said.  "I am roused.  She's so insolent, Freddy."

"What?" he said, stopping her before she got further.  "Insolent? to
whom?"

"To . . ."  Meg hesitated.  "To life," she said abruptly.  "She says
things that I could hit her for saying.  Freddy, do squash her!--she
suggests something nasty with every word she utters."

"I'll try and flirt with her--won't that do?"

"No, don't, Freddy!"  Fear clutched at Meg's heart; the woman in her
trembled for her brother.  Millicent was so fair, so tempting; Freddy
was young and, Meg thought, ignorant of the wiles of women.

"You'd rather I did than Mike?"  Freddy's eyes laughed as he watched
the blush rise to his sister's cheeks.  It made her extraordinarily
attractive--indeed, fighting seemed to suit Meg.  He pinched her arm;
they were close pals, tried chums.  "I know your secret, Meg--I've had
eyes for other things than the tomb!"

"Do you mind, Freddy?"  Meg slipped her arm through her brother's; her
eyes shone with happiness.

Freddy pressed her arm close to his side.  Meg loved him for it.  "If
I'd minded I shouldn't have let things go so far, should I?  I could
have packed you off home."

"You've been a darling, Freddy, and I'm so happy!  I never knew
anything could be so perfect.  I sound silly, don't I?"

"No.  Mike's one of the very best, Meg.  But you'll have to look after
him a bit."  Freddy's voice was graver.

"How do you mean, Freddy?"  Meg at once thought of Mrs. Mervill.
Freddy read her thoughts in her voice.

"I don't mean in that way--rather not!  He's as straight as a die.  I
mean, you'll have to help him to walk on his two legs, Meg--stop him
standing on his head, make him practical."

"I love him for it, Freddy."

"But it doesn't pay.  We're of this world and we've got to live in this
world.  Mike's always trying to get beyond it, to get into touch with
the other side.  It's no good meddling with that sort of thing, it
always has a disastrous effect on the human mind and human happiness,
which proves to me that we're not intended to know or to get in touch
with those who have left us.  It's unwise to give up one's thoughts to
the supernatural."

"Perhaps it is," Meg said, "but why should we be contented to stand
still about all that sort of thing, while we leap ahead in science and
material progress and everything else?  Mike thinks the true
understanding is coming, the darkness we have lived in is passing away."

"He may be right," Freddy said.  "But for your happiness, Meg, I wish
he'd chuck it.  The 'sublime truth of spiritualism' he talks about, and
the 'God-ruled world-state'--the one's dangerous to his bodily welfare,
the other's the Utopian dream of failures.  I don't want you to marry a
failure, old girl.  I want you to have the sort of life you're fitted
for."

"People must be what they are, Freddy, and failure isn't a failure if
it's done its bit.  Rome wasn't built in a day, or the union of Italy
achieved without broken hearts--modern Italy had its failures, its
Utopian dreamers, long before Garibaldi's triumphant thousand marched
into Rome."

"That's true, only one never wants a failure to be a member of one's
own family.  I don't want a dreamer for a brother-in-law, Meg--not for
your husband."

"The Lamptons always want to come in with the victorious legions," Meg
said.  They were nearing the hut.  "It seems as if the real victors in
life were what we call the failures, the pioneers of truth."

"I'm awfully glad, anyway, Meg.  Mike's a lucky chap and you're a lucky
girl.  You know, I think the world of Mike!"

"We aren't engaged, Freddy."

"Oh, aren't you?"  He looked at her with laughing eyes.  "What do you
call it, then?  An understanding?  Or are you just 'walking out' like
'Arry and 'Arriet?"

Meg laughed happily.  "We love each other--we've not got beyond that
yet.  I suppose we're just 'walking out.'"

"You've told each other about the loving?"  Freddy's kindness was
bringing something like tears to Margaret's eyes.

"Yes.  Michael didn't mean to--it . . ." she paused.

"Oh, I know!  The usual thing.  Things seem to be going on all right."
He laughed.  "It mustn't run too smoothly."

"Don't laugh, Freddy.  Michael thought you would think it cheek--he
won't allow me to consider myself bound to him."  She laughed
deliriously.  "The dear boy wants me to feel free to change my mind,
because he's 'a drifter,' because he thinks he isn't a good enough
match for your sister.  Your sister, Freddy, comes right above mere
Meg."

"I see," Freddy said.  "Then I'm not to speak about it yet, am I?  Just
tell me what you want and I'll do it."

"Not yet, Freddy--not while that odious woman is here, at any rate."

"All right, I'll wait.  Only I'd rather like to see her face when I
congratulated Mike."

"Ought you to congratulate Mike?  I'm your sister--isn't it the other
way on?  Shouldn't you congratulate me?"

They were close to the door of the hut; Meg lingered.

"He's the luckiest man I know.  I wish he had a sister just like you.
Of course he's to be congratulated!  And now I must go and make myself
beautiful."  His eyes smiled their brightest.  "I bet you I could cut
Mike out with the fair Millicent if I set my mind to it."

In the sunlight Freddy looked irresistible, with his violet eyes,
shaded by his thick lashes, his crisp hair, as sunny and fair as a
boy's.  Meg knew that he was a much better-looking man than
Mike--indeed, he would have been too good-looking if his figure had not
been all that it was, if there had been the slightest touch of the
feminine about him.  There was not.  Yet in spite of his good looks and
astonishing colouring, Meg was right in her consciousness that for
women there was more magnetic attraction in Mike's mobile plainness, in
his sensitive, irregular features.  When the two men were talking
together, the senses and eyes of women would be drawn to the plain man.

During lunch Millicent Mervill was very good.  She was interested in
hearing about the tomb and, Freddy thought, wonderfully intelligent
upon the subject.  She was, as he expressed it, as clever as a monkey.
What little knowledge she had she used to the utmost advantage, to its
extreme limit.  All her intellectual goods she displayed in her shop
window.  She had a telling way of saying, "I am completely ignorant
upon this or that subject," suggestive of the fact that she really did
know a great deal about many other things.  She seldom "gave herself
away."

Freddy came to the conclusion that she was so quick that it was quite
impossible to discover what she really did or did not know or grasp,
and, as he said to Mike afterwards, "What she did not know, she will
set about knowing when she gets home.  That brain won't rest still
under ignorance, or let Meg know what it doesn't know."

The description of the fine effigy of the queen thrilled her; her
appetite for details was insatiable.  There was plenty to talk about,
so conversation did not flag and personal topics were avoided.

Freddy thought that she was nicer than she had ever been before and
even prettier.  He enjoyed his lunch; it certainly was a change to have
a beautiful woman, who was not his sister, and who did her best to make
herself attractive, lunching with them in their desert home.  After his
tremendous efforts of the last three or four days her presence was
pleasing.  Even the modern clothes and aggressively-manicured
finger-nails gave him healthy sensations.  His manhood enjoyed her
super-femininity.

The little room palpitated with life, the antagonism of the two women
was a thing he could feel.  He felt it as surely as he had felt the hot
air of the tomb.  Freddy enjoyed looking at his sister; her combative
mood vitalized her.

Her dark hair, so soft and abundant, looked tempting to touch, after
the dragged and matted "something" which clung to the skull of the
mummy.

Nothing in the room was intrinsically worth a couple of shillings.  The
seat on which Michael was sitting had been made out of empty boxes;
they had been converted into a very presentable armchair by the
ingenuity of Mohammed Ali.  Yet the atmosphere of the hut was human and
domesticated, the two women sweet and fragrant.

And so it was not difficult for Freddy to respond to his fair guest's
pleasant chatter.  She made him laugh heartily more than once, and he
was ready for a good laugh.  He was braced by her quick wit and
humorous way of looking at things.

Meg was doing her best to appear happy; she was really getting angrier
and angrier every minute with the woman who was so thoroughly enjoying
herself; angry because Freddy, like all other men, was being deceived
by her, because he was obviously thinking her very excellent
company--which she was.  He was no doubt already wondering why she,
Meg, hated her so whole-heartedly.  Freddy had seldom mentioned
Millicent to his sister; he had kept his own counsel.  The Lamptons
were silent men, whose appreciation of women like Millicent never led
them astray in the choosing of their wives.

Michael had given Millicent his first vivid impressions of the tomb in
a very "Mik-ish" manner.  He described Freddy, strikingly
distinguishable in his white flannels, greedily picking up jewels and
gold and bits of blue faience and stowing them away into boxes by the
light of an electric torch.

"A tomb burglar if ever you saw one!  I shall never forget the sight."

"There's lots of work for you, Meg, to-night," Freddy said.  "There's
an awful lot of things to sort and clean--beautiful things."

"How exciting!" Millicent said.  "Can you keep any of the small things?
They'd stick to my fingers, I feel sure."

"No," Freddy said.  "Not unless you are a thief.  They aren't ours--I'm
only entrusted with the finding of them."

Millicent made a face of dissatisfaction, as she felt for something
which she wore fastened to the long gold chain which was hanging from
her neck.

"I wonder if you will pronounce this genuine or a fake?  Do you
remember, Mike, our buying it?"  She ran her fingers along the chain.
The genuine antique or fake was not on it; it was missing.  She felt
again.  No; there was nothing on the chain.

"Oh, I've lost it!" she said.  "My precious eye of Horus, Mike.  I
wouldn't have lost it for the world!"  Her tone conveyed his
understanding of the personal value which she attached to the amulet.

"What was it?" Freddy said.  "Can't we get another?  If you bought it,
it was probably a fake."

"A new one would never be the same--Mike gave me the one I've
lost"--she purposely used Michael's intimate name--"while we were
staying at Luxor.  It has been my 'heaven-sent gift'"--(the ancients'
name for the amulet, which represented the right eye of Horus).

They all looked to see if the amulet had been dropped in the room, if
it was under the table.  But it was nowhere to be found; the eye of
Horus was concealing itself.

"It was probably only a fake," Freddy said, "if you bought it in Luxor.
I'll try and get a genuine one for you--for ages and ages they were the
commonest of all amulets, judging by the number we find.  Almost every
ancient Egyptian must have worn one.  It was the all-seeing eye, the
protecting light."

"The moon was the left eye of Horus and the sun was the right--isn't
that so?" Millicent asked.

"Roughly speaking, but the eye of Horus is a complicated subject.  It's
not just the evil or good eye of Italy, by any means.  The eye of Horus
is the eye of Heaven, Shakespeare's 'Heaven's eye,' but it's when it
gets identified with Ra that the complication comes in.  The _sacred_
eye is the eye of Heaven, or Ra.  Poets, ancient and modern, have sung
of it, from the time of Job to the days of Shakespeare.  But there was
also the evil eye, the one we hear so much about in Southern Italy."

"Tell me about that.  I always like the naughty stories.  I've never
grown up in that respect.  The evil eye is more interesting to me than
the eye of Heaven.  I knew a woman in Italy who was selling lace; she
let a friend of mine buy all she wanted from her at the most absurdly
cheap prices you can imagine.  When the lady of the house we were
staying in, who had allowed the woman to call and bring her lace, asked
her why she had sold the lace to a stranger at a price for which she
had refused to part with it to her, she simply threw up her eyes and
said, '_Ma_, Signora, what could I do?  She had the evil eye--if I had
not given it to her, what terrible misfortunes she could have brought
to me!'"

"I remember seeing a crowded tramcar in Rome empty itself in a moment
when a well-known Prince, who was supposed to have the evil eye, got
into it," Michael said.

"A common expression for a woman in ancient Egypt was _stav-ar-ban_,
which meant 'she who turns away the evil eye,'" Freddy said.

"Then the Egyptians believed in the evil eye, as apart from the sacred
eye of Ra?" Millicent said.  "What a universal belief it seems to have
been!  One meets with it all over the world."

"Wasn't there a book found in the ancient library of the temple of
Dendereh which told all about the turning away of the evil eye?" Mike
asked.

"I believe so," Freddy said.  "But I've never seen it."

Millicent was still fingering her empty chain.  "I feel lost without my
eye," she said to Mike, who had answered her persistent gaze.  "You
bought it for me after that long, long day we spent together in the
desert behind Karnak.  Do you remember that Coptic convent"--she made a
face of disgust--"and the amusement of the nuns at my blue eyes, and
all the dreadful dogs?  You bought the eye from the old man who looked
as if he had lived inside a pyramid all his life."  She turned to
Margaret.  "It was a wonderful day, and we behaved like children in the
desert, didn't we, Mike?"

Meg managed to hide her annoyance, but something hurt inside
her--probably her bowels of wrath.

"It was a lovely day, I remember.  The Coptic convent looked like a
collection of beehives huddled together in the desert.  You wouldn't go
inside it because you were afraid of the fleas, and I wasn't allowed to
go in because I was a man."

"I'd had enough of Coptic churches.  Have you ever been in the early
Christian churches in Cairo?" she asked Margaret.

"No, but I've heard about them."

"Well, I have, and all I can say is that if the early Christians in
Rome were as dirty as the survivors of the Church of St. Mark are in
Cairo, I don't wonder at the pagans.  I wasn't going to risk the
monastery after the appalling filth of their churches, dirty pigs!"

At that precise moment Mohammed Ali brought in the coffee.  It was
served in the native fashion, in small enamelled brass bowls, on a
brass tray.  When he handed the tray to Mrs. Mervill he pointed to a
small object lying beside her cup.

"Lady, I find _antika_ all safe."

Millicent's heart beat more quickly; a little deeper rose warmed her
cheeks.  She picked up the eye of blue faience from the brass tray with
well-assumed delight.  Margaret's dark eyes were resting on her.  She
felt them.

"Thank you," she said to Mohammed Ali.  "I'm so glad."  Her hand shook
a little as she lifted her cup.  "Heaven's eye is not withdrawn," she
said gaily to Michael.

"Where did you find it, Mohammed?" Michael asked the question
innocently.

Mohammed Ali's eyes met Mrs. Mervill's.  In them he saw the promise of
a handsome _baksheesh_.

"When lady get off donkey, chain it catch on the saddle."

A slight sigh escaped from Millicent's lips; Mohammed was worthy of his
race.

"Oh, yes!  How stupid of me not to remember!  I quite forgot that my
chain caught as I dismounted.  I never thought of looking to see if I
had lost anything."

Meg knew that Millicent Mervill was lying and she knew that Mohammed
knew that she was lying.  She also knew Mohammed well enough to know
that if she chose, she could buy him back again from Millicent.
Mohammed handled the truth very carelessly; it was still his unshakable
policy to secure as much money as he could and give as much pleasure as
he could to the person who gave him the most.  His Eastern knowledge of
human nature told him that Margaret would not be likely to seek to buy
his secret.  He might, perhaps, tell her the truth when Mrs. Mervill
had gone away, because he sincerely liked her, but as far as bribery or
corruption was concerned, he must rest content with what Mrs. Mervill
thought a sufficient reward for his intelligence and silence.

Margaret had felt pretty certain that Millicent's curiosity had not
remained contented with the inspection of the public sitting-room.  As
she watched her trembling hand and noted the blush on her cheeks, she
felt that her suspicions were not unjust.  Instinctively her mind flew
to her diary; it was lying on a table in her room.  She had kept it
very faithfully over since her arrival in the valley.  It was an
intensely intimate, human document.  It was a record of all her
impressions and of her life in the valley, and of every incident which
had happened in relation to her friendship with Michael.  If Millicent
had read any of it, she must have seen into her very soul.  Margaret's
whole being writhed at the thought of the thing.  She had taken the
precaution to write it in French so that she could leave the book
unlocked in her bedroom.  None of the house "boys" could read French;
Millicent, of course, both spoke and read it fluently.

As Meg thought of this, the cruel laying bare of her inner woman to the
woman she hated, a hot blush dyed her cheeks; she felt giddy.

Millicent noticed the blush.  Her eyes rested upon Meg's until Meg was
compelled to raise hers.  Then the two women looked into each other's
souls.  Their unspoken thoughts were plainly read by each other.

It was Millicent who triumphed.  No shame made her eyes drop; no fear
weakened their challenge.  They boldly said, "You see, I know, I have
learnt.  You are not all that you look.  I have discovered the other
woman."

With extraordinary clearness Margaret visualized Millicent's delicate
fingers turning over the pages of her diary.  She could see her eyes
gloating over its secret passages.  She could feel Millicent's
beautiful presence filling her plain little bedroom, which would never
be the same again.  Her delicate fragrance, which was no stronger than
the subtle perfume of English wild flowers, was probably lingering in
it still.  Meg felt herself clumsily big and masculine beside her, for
Millicent never allowed you to forget that, above all things, she was a
woman, that in her companionship with men she was not of the same sex.

When the eye of Horus was once more, with Freddy's assistance, securely
fastened on to the gold chain, and the coffee had been drunk and
cigarettes were being indulged in, Mrs. Mervill's American friend
appeared at the hut.

He was a very agreeable and cultured man.  His chief interest in things
Egyptian was centred in the subject of ancient festivals.  When he was
smoking with the party, a really interesting discussion took place
between the three men.  Mr. Harben, the newcomer, had been particularly
interested in the "intoxication festivals" held in honour of the
goddess Hathor at Dendereh.

Michael naturally had read more upon the subject of the festival of
Isis.  At her festival the "Songs of Isis" were sung in the temples of
Osiris by two virgins.  These festivals were held for five days at the
sowing season every year.  These "songs of Isis," of course, related to
the destruction of Osiris by Set and the eventual reconstruction of his
body by his wife Isis and her sister goddess Nephthys.  In other words,
it was the festival of the triumph of light over darkness, the power of
righteousness over evil, the oldest of all battles.

During the discussion Millicent Mervill was at her best.  She was
intellectually curious and excitable.  The festival of Isis bored her;
she did not care for or believe in the inevitable triumph of light over
darkness.  With her evil flourished like a green bay-tree, while
righteousness was its own reward--and a very dull one.  She was
religious, after the conventional fashion of the people with whom she
consorted; she enjoyed going to a church where there was good music or
an audacious preacher to be heard.  But she never wanted to be better
than she was; her wants were for the further satisfaction of her
material enjoyments on this earth.

But the Bacchanalian festivals of Hathor had interested her and aroused
her curiosity, from the very first time that she had seen the figures
of the dancing-girls, so realistically carved on the walls of the
temple of Dendereh.  She had read all that she could lay her hands on
relating to the subject, which consisted only of such portions of the
papyrus as the translators have seen fit to give to the general public.
Her American friend had gone further.  He was not only interested in
the Bacchanalian dances, but in Egyptian festivals generally.

Both Margaret and Millicent became silent as the discussion proceeded
and for the time being their animosity was forgotten; they found
themselves for once sympathetic listeners and good companions.  Michael
was pleased.

As the discussion gradually soared above their understanding, they
talked of things between themselves.

Time flew pleasantly, so much so that Margaret felt a little regret
when at last Millicent and her friend said good-bye.  She had almost
forgotten her ugly suspicions about Millicent, who had been very
charming and simple.  She wished that she had not spoken so hastily to
Freddy about her.  Her conscience pricked her.

Later on, as the trio, Michael, Freddy, and Margaret, watched their two
guests depart, very different thoughts filled their minds.  Michael was
hoping that a new phase in the acquaintance between the two women had
begun, that Meg would now hold out a helping hand of sympathy to
Millicent.  Meg was wondering if Freddy thought that she had been
unjust and horrid, just because Millicent was beautiful and a cleverer
woman than herself.  Freddy had obviously enjoyed her unexpected visit.

"Your fair friend paid us this honour, Mike, for some reason best known
to herself," he said.  "Some reason she has not divulged, I wonder what
it was?  There is always a hidden reason in what she does."

"Curiosity," said Michael, carelessly.  "She wanted to see how
excavators live and to find out for herself what we were doing."

"I guess so!" Freddy said, significantly.  "Find out for herself--that
was just it."  He laughed.  "I wonder how much she did find out?"
Freddy clapped his hand on Mike's shoulder as he spoke.  "I didn't give
you away, old chap!"

Michael faced him squarely.  So Freddy knew!

"Has Meg told you?"  His voice was anxious.

"Told me?  Do you suppose I'm blind?"  Freddy spoke with such frank
sympathy and pleasure that from his voice more than his words Michael
took heart.

"It's awful cheek on my part."

"Yes, 'awful cheek,'" Freddy said.  "Considering Meg's just the one and
only Meg in the world."  He took Meg's brown hand in his--such a
different hand from Millicent's!--and placed it on the top of Michael's
and held it there.  "Bless you, my children!" he said.  "I feel like a
heavy father.  And I've nothing more to say, except that I'm jolly
glad, and I congratulate you both."

Meg's eyes were shining.  Freddy was so boyish and yet so much her
elder brother.  How she loved him!

"Thanks, old chap," Michael said.  "I suppose Meg's told you all about
it?--I mean, how I'm not going to let her bind herself to me?  We love
each other, and I forgot and told her I did."

Freddy laughed.  "If something better than you, you old drifter, turns
up, she's to be free to take him.  Of course, something will!"

"Yes," Michael said.  "Or if . . ." he paused.

"If you prove too unpractical for a husband, you old humbug, I'm to
cancel the engagement!"

Meg linked her arm in her brother's.  "I'm quite practical, enough for
us both," she said.  "The Lampton common sense wants leavening.  We
never rise to heights, Freddy--we're solid dough."

"We manage to get down into the bowels of the earth, which helps a bit,
if we can't soar very high."

All three laughed.  Freddy meant the tomb, of course.

Freddy was smoking a cigarette.  His eyes were following the two
donkeys which were taking Millicent and her friend down the valley.
They looked like white insects in the distance; they had travelled
rapidly, as donkeys will travel on their homeward journey.

"The fair Millicent!--and, by Jove, she is fair!"--Freddy said,
meditatively, "didn't come here to find out your engagement--don't
imagine so.  She managed to carry away some information more difficult
to obtain than that."  He laughed and quoted the old saying, "Love,
like light, cannot be hid.  What a pity she isn't all as nice as the
nice parts of her, or as nice as she is pretty!"

"I always think she looks so nice to eat," Margaret said.

"I think she looks so nice to kiss," Freddy said laughingly.  "If that
American hadn't been there, I'd have taken her off for a walk, and then
I could have told you, Mike, what it was like."

Meg blushed to the roots of her hair.  Her brother's words recalled the
ball at Assuan.  She knew that Michael knew what it was like.

Freddy saw Meg's blush and wondered what it meant.  He turned and left
the lovers to enjoy a few moments' uninterrupted bliss and to discuss
the day's events.

Their bliss consisted in standing together, silently watching the two
figures on the white donkeys disappear into the valley below.  When the
last trace of them had vanished and the desert and the sky composed
their world, Meg gave a sigh of relief.  Perfect content was expressed
in her attitude and silence, a long silence, too sacred to be broken
rashly.  The sun was brilliant, the distance before them immense,
compelling.

As Meg gazed and gazed, her heart became more and more full of
happiness.  The world was a wonderful mother; she had only to trust, to
believe, to love, to have happiness showered upon her.

"In a book I was reading the other day, Mike," she said, "the heroine
remarked that looking into a great distance always made her long to be
better than she was.  How true it is--at least, with me.  I knew what
she meant, instantly.  I feel it now, don't you?"

"That's why town-life is so bad for us," he said.  "Our vision never
gets beyond the traffic, beyond the progress of commerce.  I've often
thought the same thing.  Distances are sublime."

"The distances in the desert make me feel far more like that than any
other distances.  The desert has taught me so much--it is a wonderful
mother."

Michael's eyes answered her.

"Looking at that distance makes me wish I hadn't been so wicked in my
heart about Mrs. Mervill.  I was bursting with hate of her, Mike--I
longed to hurt her as she always hurts me!"

"You behaved splendidly!  I knew it was an awful trial to you.  You
knew I understood, Meg?"

"It was a trial," Meg said, "but why am I so little when I am put to
the test, and why do I feel so big, so far above such contemptible
things, when I look at a distance like that?"

"Because you're a darling, human woman, Meg."  Michael's arms went
round her.  "Because there would be no merit in our victories if the
battles were quite easy."

"I suppose not, but for your belief in me, Mike, I want to be as big as
the biggest thoughts I've got, and I'm only as small as my meanest."

"You are the mistress of my happiness, Meg."

Meg's eyes shone with understanding, while his words called up the
figure and the bright rays of Akhnaton.

"Freddy said that I am to act as a curb on your unpractical tendencies,
Mike.  I felt very deceitful.  He doesn't know how much I've aided and
abetted them."

"He never imagined that he'd a practical mystic for a sister, did he?"

"Never," Meg said.

"But that's what you are, dearest--a practical mystic.  You are a woman
with two sides to your nature--the intensely practical and the
subconsciously mystic.  Egypt has developed the mystic half--your
Lampton forbears are responsible for the other."

"The Lampton half of me keeps my two feet firmly planted on the earth,
Mike."

"The mystic half loves this silly drifter."  He pressed her to him.

"The practical half says, come back to the hut and help Freddy."

And so they went.




PART II


CHAPTER I

Michael's travels in the Eastern desert had barely extended over a three
days' journey by camel and some hours spent on the Egyptian State
Railway, which runs by the banks of the Nile.

The town of Luxor lies on the right or east bank of the Nile, four
hundred and fifty miles to the south of Cairo.  Tel-el-Amarna, or "The
City of the Horizon," Akhnaton's capital, lies about a hundred and sixty
miles south of Cairo.  Michael could very easily have gone almost all the
way to the modern station of Tel-el-Amarna, or Haggi Kandil, by boat or
by train from Luxor, which faces the Theban Hills, in whose bowels lies
the great Theban necropolis, the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, which
had been his home for some months.  But that was not his idea; he wished
to spend all his days in the solitude of the desert, so he started his
journey at a point half-way between Luxor and Tel-el-Amarna.

This was not his first pilgrimage to the eastern desert.

Luxor and Assuan both lie on the east bank of the Nile; the great Arabian
Desert in Egypt stretches from the Suez Canal to Assuan; after Assuan it
is called the Nubian Desert.  The Libyan Desert stretches from Cairo to
Assuan, but on the western bank of the Nile.  Michael's desire was for
the uninterrupted ocean of sand which stretches from the shores of the
Atlantic to the cliffs which give the Nile its sunsets.  Its infinity of
space drew him to it.

In the desert, where a traveller begins his day at dawn and ends it at
sundown, where the slow tread of his camel is only interrupted by a short
halt for the midday meal, and the days roll on and into each other as the
sand-dunes roll on and into succeeding sand-dunes, the sense of hours and
days becomes lost.  With nothing in front of the eye but an infinity of
sky and distance and nothing active in that distance but dazzling heat,
moving over the desert, the mind becomes a part of the intense solitude.
The traveller's ego is comatized; he takes his place with the elements.

When the traveller's long day's march is done, the wonder of the starlit
nights makes his past life seem still more unreal.  It has been truly
said that the solitary contemplation of the desert stars either for ever
convinces a doubter of the certainty of a God, or confirms his opinions
as an Atheist.  When Michael was alone with the stars, the Sweet Singer
of Israel's words ever rang in his ears:

"When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the
stars, which Thou hast ordained;

"What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that Thou
visitest him?"


During the three days spent on camel-back in the desert nothing had
happened which the world calls happening.  Michael's small equipment was
proving itself entirely satisfactory and sufficient for his needs.  His
guide and his servants were both agreeable and obedient.  His head-man or
guide was none other than the soothsayer who had predicted the
astonishing wealth of the tomb which Freddy had discovered.  He had
travelled far and wide in the great Arabian Desert and he had also helped
at the excavations at Tel-el-Amarna.

Although apparently nothing had happened, no events which would bear
recording in the diary of a practical explorer, yet much had happened
which evaded the limitations of words.  The things which had happened
were the great things which mattered to Michael's mind.  They had
produced an extraordinary sense of repose; they had settled his nerves
and allowed his convictions to steadily develop, to emerge from shadowy
dreams.  If he thought less constantly of Margaret as the days wore on,
it was with more satisfaction and confidence.  He ceased to blame himself
for confessing his love; he accepted that also as an act of the guiding
Hand.

On the desert march Michael generally went at the head of his cavalcade.
He liked the wide sweep for the eye, the great expanse, undisturbed, even
by such picturesque figures as the natives on their camels.  Over and
over again he rode for hours in a beautiful dream; he gave himself up to
the intoxication of immensity.  At such times the thought would come to
him that if he turned the universe upside-down, nothing would happen.
The high heavens would be made of golden sand and the limitless earth of
bright blue--that would be all the difference; nothing would tumble
about, for there was nothing to tumble; nothing would be standing on its
head, for there was nothing which had a head to stand on.  God's world
was as it had been before the creation of man.

Since his _Hijrah_, as Freddy called his flight from the valley, he had
ceased to think about his own standing on his head.  He had accepted the
fact that a man must work out his own life as truly as he must work out
his own salvation.  To be a weak copy of Freddy would be contemptible; it
would be better to be an out-and-out failure and drifter for the rest of
his days.  As a failure he would at least be living the life he best
understood, the life which to him seemed fuller than the lives lived by
successful materialists.

For the whole three days in the desert he had scarcely passed a living
creature; it was the most desolate journey he had ever taken.  Some
portions of the great desert are much more barren than others, more
extraordinarily desolate.  The whole thing, of course, depends upon the
all-important water.  One writer's words explain the matter
concisely--"there are two kinds of desert in Egypt, the desert of sand,
which is only desert because it is left without water, and the desert
which is desert because nothing profitable will grow there."

Probably the country over which Michael had travelled belonged to the
last type of desert.  There had been wonderful effects of light and shade
and strange changes in the colour of the sand and rocks, owing to
geological reasons.  Sometimes such strange effects that he found it hard
to believe, from a distance, that there were not bright carpets or gay
flowers spread on the sands.

To the uninitiated it sounds as if such a journey could become
dangerously monotonous and boring, and so it would to the eye or mind
which has not the true desert instinct.  Michael's had it.  He loved its
passionate intensity of sky and space as a true sailor loves the ocean.
He loved his "ship of the desert," which bore him silently over the
rolling waves of sand, as a Jack Tar loves his ship.  He loved the
stories of the desert which his guide told him at night under the
southern stars, as an English Jack Tar loves his fo'c's'e yarns.

Although nothing ever happened, there was for Michael something happening
every minute, some fresh beauty which revealed a new phase of Nature,
some geological surprise which changed the colour and atmospheric effect
of his surroundings.  At one time mirage after mirage appeared and
disappeared like delicate, subtle dreams; fair cities sprang up on the
horizon with white-winged sailing-boats drifting on their waters; tall
palm-trees, black against the light, stood up and refreshed the eye, only
to become fainter and fainter until they were no more.

These fair Jerusalems, God's help to tired travellers, with eyes grown
weary of emptiness and space, made beautiful interludes in the day's
march.  Since their first day's march they had seen no real desert
villages, with their much-treasured palm-trees and picturesque
inhabitants, for they had made for the open desert.  Where palm-trees
grow, there are also human habitations and Government taxes.  Anything
green in the desert which is of lasting duration is the result of
artificial irrigation.  But if the sand brings forth no food for man or
beast, its emptiness holds a world of prayers and desires.

      *      *      *      *      *      *

It was about noon of the fourth day of Michael's journey when he saw in
the distance a cavalcade of camels riding towards him.  It had emerged
out of nothing; suddenly it became clearer and clearer.  Was it mirage?
It was still so distant that it might yet prove an optical delusion.

He stopped his camel.  Abdul, seeing that his master evidently wanted
something, rode forward quickly.

"Look, Abdul," Michael said, "can you see some camels coming towards us?"

Abdul had no need to look.  His eyes could see much further than
Michael's.  He had already noticed the cavalcade.

"_Aiwah, Effendi_, they are camels carrying real human beings."  His
master's words had implied that he wondered if he was looking at a
mirage.  Michael had never seen a mirage of anything but scenery,
villages with minarets and rivers with boats--reflections, in fact, of
distant towns.

Abdul assured his master that the camels were real camels and that he was
almost certain that it was an European outfit; it did not belong to
desert natives.

Michael again rode on ahead for a few moments.  He wondered where the
travellers were coming from, and whither they were bound.  This fourth
morning's journey had certainly brought them slightly nearer again to the
border of civilization.  He knew that they were skirting an ancient
oasis.  Perhaps the travellers had come from it.  He was still some
distance from Tel-el-Amarna--not the modern Tel-el-Amarna or Haggi
Kandil, which lies about five miles back from the banks of the river,
where passengers travelling by railway alight when they come from Cairo
to visit the ruins of the ancient city--but the ruins of Akhnaton's
capital.  At the point on the Nile where Akhnaton chose to build his
city, the limestone cliffs go back from the river about three miles,
returning to it some six miles further on.

Michael's objective was not the ruins of Akhnaton's city, but the desert
and the hills which lie beyond it.  The boundaries of the "City of the
Horizon," Akhnaton's new capital, the seat of the heretic King, were so
carefully laid down and defined by him that there has been no mistaking
its exact size and circumference.

Michael was going to the original tomb of Akhnaton, cut out of the hills
which formed a half-crescent round the city, like a bay, reaching back
from the river.  In these encircling hills the King's body was buried;
the hills were his chosen resting-place.

"Here Akhnaton elected to be buried, where hyenas prowled and jackals
wandered, and where the desolate cry of the night-owls echoed over the
rocks.  In winter the wind sweeps up the valley and howls round the
rocks; in summer the sun makes it a veritable furnace, unendurable to
man.  There is nothing here to remind one of the God Who watches over
him, and the tender Aton of the Pharaoh's conception would seem to have
abandoned this place to the spirits of evil.  There are no flowers where
Akhnaton cut his sepulchre, and no birds sing; for the King believed that
his soul, caught up into the noon of Paradise, would need no more
delights on earth.

"The tomb consisted of a passage descending into the hill and leading to
a rock-cut hall, the roof of which was supported by four columns.  Here
stood the sarcophagus of pink granite in which the Pharaoh's mummy would
lie.  The walls of this hall were covered with scenes carved in plaster,
representing various phases in the Aton worship.  From the passage there
led another small chamber, beyond which a further passage was cut,
perhaps to lead to the second hall in which the Queen should be buried,
but the work was never finished." [1]

Later on, for political and religious reasons, his mummy was disentombed,
taken up the river to the western desert and placed in his mother's
splendid tomb in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings.  It was in these
same hills that Michael believed the King to have concealed his treasure.

The treasure was Michael's practical objective.  To others the idea might
seem absurd and unpractical; to him it was quite possible and practical.
He could not have been more businesslike in his marching and halts if he
had been a general taking his troops across the desert to relieve a
beleaguered city.  It was a part of his nature to be practical about the
unpractical.  The words of his old friend in el-Azhar often came back to
him as his camel bore him through a spell of light, or as he listened to
the thundering silence of the Arabian desert.  He recalled his counsel,
to journey undoubtingly, to follow in the steps of a "child of God," who
would lead him to the treasure which no eyes had seen for countless
centuries.

So far no child of God had crossed his path.  From dawn until dusk he had
seen nothing living or moving but one pale lizard, almost colourless as
the rocks from which it had come; it had scurried across his path, the
sole inhabitant of the untrodden sands, alarmed at the invasion of its
kingdom.

These thoughts were passing through his mind as his camel bore him nearer
and nearer to the cavalcade which was coming towards him.  The unexpected
sight of travellers had raised a whirlwind of new doubts in his brain and
called up undesired visions before his eyes.  For the last three days
nothing had disturbed the divine calm of his desert surroundings.  He had
contentedly become a part of his camel; its somnolent tread had lulled
his senses like the gentle movement of an ocean steamer on the high seas.

As the two cavalcades drew nearer to each other, Abdul pressed forward to
his master's side.  His long sight, well used to desert distances, had
clearly discerned what to Michael was still indistinct, blurred by the
sun.

"One lady in party, Effendi."

Michael showed surprise.  It was an extremely unlikely place to meet a
lady on camel-back; there were no tourists in that part of the desert, so
far back from the Nile; it was not a likely place to meet an European
pleasure-party.  Michael knew that Abdul had meant an European lady when
he spoke of "one lady" being in the party; he would not have mentioned
the fact if it had been only a Bedouin Arab woman moving her home to some
more desirable spot.  Perhaps it was some excavation-party.  A number of
European women, he knew, were now engaged on archaeological work in Egypt.

As the distance shortened, he began to count the number of the camels.
It was not a large equipment.

Quite suddenly the two leading camels of the approaching party strode
forward, almost at a gallop, the curious gallop of fast-travelling desert
camels.  The next minute a clear voice called out:

"Hallo, good morning!  Have you used Pears' Soap?"

Michael's heart stopped beating.  It was Millicent's voice.  For the sake
of appearances he returned her greeting gaily, although his heart was
filled with anger.

"No," he cried back.  "But I've used desert sand, which the Prophet said
does as well."

Millicent had tricked him, cheated him.  She had discovered his plans;
she had laid hers very cleverly so as to meet him on the most desolate
part of his journey.  A vision of Margaret's anger, had she seen her
riding towards him, rose before his eyes.  The tone of Michael's voice
expressed something of his feelings; it made Millicent all the more
daring.

"I arranged a surprise for you--wasn't I clever?"

"It is certainly a surprise," Michael said.  "Where are you going?"

"Whither thou goest, I will go," she said laughingly.  "Where do you
suppose I am going?"

"This is absurd, Millicent!"  Michael lowered his voice.

"Why absurd?  The desert's big enough for us both, isn't it?"

"I should have thought it sufficiently big to have made our meeting
unnecessary."

"Now, Mike, don't be an ungracious pig!  Here I am and here I mean to
stay.  I won't bother you, so just be nice."

The mules and camels of both parties had met.  The men had joined forces
and much talking was going on amongst the natives.

"Have you come alone?" Michael asked.

"My dragoman is with me."

"Of course," Mike said.  "I know that.  But are you by yourself, without
any other European?"

"Quite," Millicent said.  "I didn't want anyone.  Hassan's a reliable
dragoman.  I came to meet you."

"Do you think it was nice of you?"

"Well, no," she said.  "Perhaps not, but it is nice for me, Mike, and it
will be nice for you, too, if you will only be sensible and accept the
situation."

"What do you mean by being sensible?" he asked.

"Just allowing me to come, and being pleasant and happy and enjoying
yourself.  I've everything I need--I won't ask you for a single thing but
happiness."

"I shan't be happy--I wished to be alone.  You knew it."

"What harm shall I do you?  I'll halt when you halt, I'll go on when you
go on.  I'll be _douce comme un lapin blanc_--I really can be, Mike."
Her eyes asked him if in that respect she was not speaking the truth.

"Yes," he said.  "You can be anything you want to be."  He sighed.  "I
wish you oftener wanted to be good, Millicent; I wish you oftener wanted
to please me and not always only yourself."

"I'd get nothing if I did, Mike.  I stole this march on you, half for fun
and half because it's no use trusting to you.  I never see you--you are
afraid of yourself."

"I told you it was useless."  He moved his camel further from hers.  "I
must see what is to be done.  You must turn back.  Your very presence
disturbs all my ideas."

"The natives think this is a prearranged plan, of course.  They give you
the benefit of being more human than you are."

Michael looked at her in annoyance.  He knew that she was right; he knew
that even Abdul, the visionary, would not believe him if he told him
otherwise; he knew that already he had formed his own opinion of
Michael's surprise.

Millicent's veil almost completely hid her face.  She flung it up over
her sun-hat.  As Abdul came to his master's side, Michael saw his eyes
linger on the Englishwoman's beauty.  He knew that to the Eastern,
mixture of mystic and fanatic as he was, her freshness and fairness were
like the scent of white jasmine to his nostrils.

This woman, who loved his master--for already Millicent's dragoman had
confided her secret to him--was very rarely beautiful, and in his eyes
very desirable; but she was false.  His eyes had instantly seen beyond.
Because she was false she interested him.  She was not like other
Englishwomen; she was not like the girl who was the sister of Effendi
Lampton.  This wealthy Englishwoman, whose body was as sweet as a branch
of scented almond-blossom, had thoughts in her heart like the thoughts of
his own countrywomen.  In his Eastern mind, Englishwomen retained their
virgin minds and ideas even when they were married women with families;
to their end they retained the hearts and minds of innocent children.
This slender creature, a sweet bundle for a man's arms, thought as his
countrywomen thought.  He saw into her mind as he had seen into the
unopened tomb.

He was amazed at the Effendi, not because of this meeting with his
mistress--it was not an unheard-of thing in the desert; he was not
unaccustomed to the ways of men and women of all nations when their
passions control their actions--he was amazed at his own false impression
of Effendi Amory's character and mind.  He had never for one moment
contemplated such a contretemps; he would never have imagined that he
could be false to Effendi Lampton's sister.  The meeting, however, lent a
double interest to their journey.

"The Effendi has been fortunate in meeting his friend," he said
respectfully.  Michael had turned to address him.

"Yes," Michael said.  "We have been fortunate."  He saw no other way of
settling the question.  For the present he must quietly accept the
inevitable.  Millicent had insisted that she had a perfect right to
follow him, even if he refused to allow her to join his party.

"We will go on, Effendi?  The _Sitt_ will accompany us?"  Abdul's voice
was expressionless, deferential.

"For to-day, at least," Michael said, "the _Sitt_ will travel with us."
He knew that equivocation was useless.

Abdul searched his master's eyes.  There was no love in them, no passion
for the woman he had taken all this trouble and secrecy to meet.
Englishmen were strange beings.  Time would prove which way the wind of
desire blew.  Was it from the woman to the man or from the man to the
woman?  Had Michael the qualities of Orientals for dissembling his
feelings?  It was rare amongst Europeans.

The cavalcade moved on.  A fresh element had been introduced into it.
The at-all-times low talk of the natives soon became more obscene than it
is possible for Western minds to imagine.  Its influence affected the
sublime silence of the desert.  God no longer shadowed the distance.

Michael knew the native mind.  He had heard the workmen at the excavation
camp, and even the girls and women in the desert villages, discussing
subjects freely and openly which to the Western mind are impossible.  He
had heard children and boys using language and ejaculations which would
disgrace the lips of the most degraded Western.

Before Millicent's appearance his men had no doubt talked together in a
way which would have shocked a stranger to the East if he could have
understood what they were saying, but there had been an absence of any
special topic; their talk had been impersonal.  Now their interests were
awakened, their lowest instincts were on the alert, their passion for
intrigue whetted.  Suggestion, like perseverance, can work miracles.
With Millicent riding by his side and with the whole company of servants
discussing their affairs, the desert had lost its purity, its healing
powers.  In its sands the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil seemed to
need no water.

Michael clung to the thought of Margaret.  For some few moments they rode
in silence.  Michael was inarticulate; his thoughts were like a flaming
bush.  In half an hour's time they would halt for lunch; until that time
Millicent held her soul in patience.

Nothing was to be gained by a broken conversation on camel-back.  A
delicious excitement exalted her; her plans had succeeded; the very devil
of insolence danced in her veins.  She had trapped Michael and
successfully outwitted Margaret Lampton.  She was going to thoroughly
enjoy herself.  Michael, of course, would become quite docile in her
hands later on; one of her gentle spells would reconcile him.

"How long have you been in the desert?" Michael asked.

"We've camped for two nights," she said.  "It's been perfectly beautiful!
We have had no difficulties, no adventures and we've scarcely met a
living soul.  This eastern desert is awfully desolate, Mike--you're alone
with your thoughts if you can't speak to your dragoman."

"It's very desolate," Mike said.  "And it's quite different from the
Valley in colour and in feeling--at least it is to me."

"I think so, too.  This morning we met a strange creature--the only human
we've struck--one of those desert fanatics, 'a child of God,' as my
dragoman called him."

Michael's heart beat faster; he forgot his annoyance.  "Where did you
meet him?" he asked.

Millicent noticed the change in his voice.  "Not long before we sighted
you.  He was travelling this way--we shall probably pass him.  Our camels
were travelling at a good pace."

"Did you speak to him?"

"No, I couldn't, but Hassan did.  I asked him about him.  He told me that
what we call an idiot or a village simple is really a man whose reasoning
powers are in heaven.  We see the material part of him, the part that
mixes with ordinary mortals.  To the Mohammedans such people are
considered sacred, special favourites of God."

"Yes, I know," Michael said, "and the worst of it is that advantage is
taken of that charming idea and dreadful things are done by rogues who
pretend to be religious fanatics or holy men.  Some of them are awful
creatures, absolute impostors, but as a rule they frequent towns and
cities.  The genuine holy man, a 'child of God,' lives apart from his
fellows in the desert."

"This poor creature wore a long cloak made out of all sorts of bits, a
weird Joseph's coat of many colours.  His tall staff was hanging with
tattered rags and his poor turban was in the last stages of decay."
Millicent's voice betokened genuine pity.  "He looked terribly thin and
tired.  I ought to have given him some food--he wouldn't accept money.  I
don't think he grasped its meaning."

Michael's thoughts were busy.  "A little child will lead you, do not
despise the favoured of God--their wealth is laid up for them in heaven."

And so they journeyed on, Millicent pleased at the result of her
conversation, it had set Michael dreaming.

"They have lots of beautiful ideas," she said.  She meant Moslems
generally, not only the simples or religious fanatics.

"Yes," Michael said.  "No religion has more lofty or beautiful ideas and
ideals."

"You don't think their ideas are often put into practice?"

"I don't know," Michael said.  "It isn't fair to judge--the Western mind
can't.  Their ideas are beautiful and in obeying the laws laid down by
the Koran they do beautiful and kindly acts; at the same time, their
minds to us seem terribly polluted.  Their religion doesn't appear to
elevate their general aims or thoughts of life."

"But isn't it the same with the greater portion of Christians, with many
of what we call religious people?"  Millicent laughed.  "I know it is
with myself, Mike.  I go to church and say my prayers and I think I
believe in all the tenets of the Church and in the Bible--at least, I'd
be frightened to not believe--and yet it doesn't make me feel a bit
better.  I don't really want to be good.  I want to eat my cake on this
earth and have it in heaven as well.  All the nicest plums with you,
Mike!"

Michael laughed.  Millicent was always so frank upon the subject of her
own worthlessness.

"We don't know what these people would be like if they had no Koran to
curb them," Millicent said.  "It may do more than you think.  It's a
strong bearing-rein."

"That's true.  The Egyptians are, I suppose, about the most sensual of
all Easterns--the women are considered so, at any rate, by Lane, and he
knew them intimately."

Millicent laughed.  "I'm sure they are, speaking generally--that's to
say, I suppose you meet exceptions here and there, as in all other
countries."

"The Prophet had his work cut out," Michael said.  "And the world doesn't
give him half the credit he deserves.  The rules he laid down in the
Koran are the only laws a Moslem really observes or reverences.  His own
soul teaches him nothing; it has been buried far too long by the laws
imposed upon it; his superman is non-existent.  The natural man blindly
obeys the Prophet's teachings in the hope of the material rewards which
will be his when he dies.  The future life has always meant a great deal
to the Egyptian peoples; their existence on earth has since time
immemorial only been looked upon as an apprenticeship for the fuller
existence.  The very fact that their earthly homes, even the Pharaoh's
palaces, were only built of sun-baked bricks made of mud, shows that they
carried out in practice the saying in the Bible about having no abiding
cities here.  Their tombs were their lasting cities and _they_ were built
to endure throughout all eternity."

"Anyhow, they are delightfully picturesque people in their devotions,"
Millicent said.  "I feel almost as pious when I watch a Moslem praying
before sunset as I do when a boy's voice is reaching up to heaven in one
of our Gothic cathedrals at home.  I think I'm at my best then, Mike,
only no one is ever present to test me."

Michael knew exactly what Millicent meant.  The emotional side of
religion excited her senses.  She imagined, when she was listening to a
boy's treble soaring up into the lofty heights of an English minster,
that her soul was soaring with it, that she was deriving spiritual
benefit from the service.  He could picture her kneeling with folded
hands, the polished nails conspicuously bright, and eyes upraised,
listening to the boy's clear, pure voice, her whole being in a satisfied
sensuous ecstasy.

He knew that this state of ecstasy was about as far as Millicent's
religion ever carried her.  She was afraid to give up the flesh-pots of
this world in case she found life without them too dull to be
supportable.  She enjoyed her state of being so thoroughly that she had
no wish to change it.  Her religion and church-going were, she
considered, sufficient to ensure her a place in heaven.  It was her way
of paying her future-life insurance policy, as were her many liberal
gifts to charities.

When the halt for lunch came, Michael and Millicent were to all outward
appearance good friends.  Michael had been considering within himself
what attitude he ought to adopt towards her amazing adventure, what face
he should try to put upon their meeting.  His knowledge of the East told
him that it was probably best to leave things alone, for whatever he said
Hassan and Abdul would put their own construction on the affair.  During
their conversation, which had been carried on without the slightest
regard for Michael's annoyance at her appearance, his thoughts had been
very busy.  Their serious talk must come later on, when they halted for
lunch.

Among the many things which troubled him, Michael tried to solve the
riddle of how Millicent had gained her knowledge of his movements.
Freddy's words had come back to him--that the fair Millicent had not come
to their camp to learn of his engagement to Margaret!  She had come to
find out something which was more difficult to discover.  Had she seen
the servants in the hut and questioned them when she was alone there?
Had she bribed Mohammed Ali?  How otherwise had she found out all that
she wanted to know?

When lunch-time came, Millicent's splendid basket, exquisitely furnished
and equipped with everything that could be desired for an appetizing and
original lunch, was opened, instead of Michael's, which contained the
simple necessities of a desert outfit.  They chose their halting place
under the shadow of a mighty rock--they were reaching hilly ground.
Millicent's outfit included a sun-shelter, which was quickly raised and
in incredible shortness of time they were comfortably seated under it, on
camp chairs at a camp table.  Michael could not help showing his pleasure
and admiring the dainty equipment.  His child's heart was very easily
touched and pleased.  Nothing was left undone which could be done to give
freshness and daintiness to the scene.  A luscious fruit salad looked
cool and tempting in a glass bowl, while iced drinks, which had been
carried in ingenious Eastern water-coolers, appealed to his parched lips.
The galantine of chicken and the selection of _hors d'oeuvre_ would not
have disgraced the table of the Cataract Hotel at Assuan.  Here, indeed,
were the flesh-pots of Egypt--_la tentation de Saint Antoine_.

Millicent noticed Michael's pleasure.  It was expressive of his simple,
open nature.  In such moments he was very lovable.

"Now, isn't this nicer," she said, "than pigging it alone?"

"It's beautiful," he said.  "What a wonderful outfit!  How clever of
you--I feel as if you had a magic wand."

"Hassan's a good man--I left everything to him."

"He's done it A1," Michael said, more coldly.  Suddenly he felt annoyed,
vexed with himself, for yielding so easily to the pleasures which
Millicent had provided, anticipating the enjoyment he would derive from
eating all the good things.

After three days' hard travelling in the desert and some days spent in
economical living in Luxor, while his arrangements were being made, he
was readier than he imagined for a good and delicately-appointed meal.
Even at the hut he had never sat down to a lunch such as this.  The
renaissance of the old Adam astonished him.

The servants had betaken themselves to a sheltered spot; discretion being
nine-tenths of a good dragoman's training, Hassan and Abdul saw to it
that their master and mistress should not be disturbed, while they
themselves remained out of sight, but within call.

"Let's sit down," Millicent said.  "I'm starving--the desert turns me
into an absolute primitive."

They sat down and while Millicent rid herself of her gloves; and sun-hat
and veil, Michael remained lost in thought.  How nice it was!  As nice as
anything could be, if . . . the "if" was subconscious . . .  if he had
only come on this journey into the desert to enjoy himself, if there was
no Margaret.  But there was a Margaret, and he adored Margaret, whose
dear dark head and trustful eyes were ever present with him they were as
present in the shelter as the golden head and the inviting, provoking
eyes opposite to him.  There never again would be for him a world which
held no Margaret, nor could he endure it if there was.  And yet her very
existence robbed this desert feast of its flavour.  He knew that to be
loyal and true to Margaret he ought not to be accepting and appreciating
the dainty lunch laid before him.  He ought not to be eating it with the
woman Meg detested.

What if Margaret knew?  What if his practical mystic had already had a
vision of their meeting?  Had some native carried Millicent's plans to
meet him to the Valley?  Had the birds of the air brought the news to
Freddy's ears?  Was Margaret now tortured by a vision of this sumptuous
desert picnic?  Could she see him sitting alone with Millicent in her
tent?  He knew how mysteriously news travels in the desert, how quickly
it journeys.  A wave of anger flushed his face as he pictured to himself
what Freddy would think of the situation.

His hands trembled as he took Millicent's dust-cloak and hat.  She looked
extremely pretty in her white muslin dress, which the cloak had hidden.
Millicent mistook the meaning of his trembling hands.  She had seen men's
hands tremble many times.

"Our little home," she said, as she sat down at the table.  "My desert
dream realized.  I'm so happy!"

"Why did you do it?" Michael cried passionately.

Millicent still mistook the nature of his emotion.  She leaned across the
table.  "Don't ask, dearest--just rest and be content.  Hand me the
sardines, like a dear man."

Michael handed her the sardines.  How could he just rest and be content?
If he did, he would allow himself to drift into the woman's mood, he
would be enjoying himself at the cost of his loyalty to Margaret.  He
would be drowning "the clear voice" with Moselle cup and smothering it
with galantine of chicken and pigeon-pie.

"I want you to promise me," Millicent said, "just to eat this one meal
happily with me, eat and forget.  For half an hour or more don't ask me
any questions and don't scold!" She handed Michael an olive in her
fingers.  "Open," she said.  "They're so good."

Michael opened his mouth, but he took the olive from her fingers into his
own.

"Will you do what I ask?" she said.  "If you will, I'll promise to listen
to you afterwards.  Your conscience is an awful bore, Michael."

"I'm an awful bore apart from my conscience.  It's simply your impish
persistence that makes you desire my society.  It can't be anything else."

"Perhaps it is," Millicent said.  "All the same, will you promise?"

"Very well," Michael said.  "That's a bargain.  I promise."

"For this one meal you'll be like you used to be?"

"What was that?" he asked.  Her words annoyed him.

"Mine," she said.  "Mine and not Margaret Lampton's."

Michael put down his knife and fork and looked straight into the eyes of
the woman opposite him.

"I am Margaret Lampton's," he said, "and you'd better know it.  I'm
Margaret Lampton's, body and soul."  He flung her hand away.

Millicent gave a suggestive whistle.  "Wh-o-o!" she said, with a low
laugh.  "So that's it?"

"What do you mean?" he said.

"Nothing--I didn't say anything, did I?  Oh, don't let's quarrel--let's
enjoy our lunch."

"Very well," he said.  "Let's, for time's flying.  But it's best for you
to know that I'm Margaret's."

"Never mind--lend yourself to me for a few days.  Surely she won't mind
if we amuse ourselves in the desert?"

"I'm not going to lend myself to you," he said.  "What nonsense you talk!
You're going back the way you came.  You can play with someone else."

"You dear silly, you can't make me!"  Millicent laughed at the idea.
"Besides, you know you want me all the time, and you've just promised to
enjoy this jolly little meal and to lecture me afterwards.  I'm not going
to be unhappy because you belong to Margaret Lampton."

"So long as you know I do," he said, "I feel I can eat your excellent
lunch."

"And if Margaret doesn't know, what can it matter?"

"Oh, Millicent!"

"You know, Mike, it's what's found out that matters.  If you enjoy
yourself and make me happy for two or three days in the desert and
Margaret never knows, what harm could it do?"

"If you can't see the harm for yourself," he said, "I can't show it to
you."

"Well, I can't," she said.  "But let's talk of something else.  Margaret
is taboo--she's spoilt half our lunch."

"First tell me how you got here, how you knew of my movements.  I spoke
of them to no one."

"No, no, that also is taboo--until after lunch."

"What can we talk about?"

Millicent looked at him.  Her eyes suggested another topic--themselves.
"Is that taboo as well!" she said, as Michael's eyes dropped under hers.

"Absolutely," he said.

"Happy idea!" she cried.  "The tomb!  If we mayn't talk of Margaret or of
our two selves or of how I got here, or of whence I came or whither you
are going, surely a tomb is a safe topic?"

"Yes," Michael said, "if any topic is safe with you."

"Ah," Millicent said.  "That's the nicest thing you've said."

"I didn't mean to be nice.  What's nice in that?"

"But you were nice, awfully nice.  If there are so many danger-zones to
be avoided between us, you don't feel very safe, very sure of yourself.
That's triumph number one for Millicent; Margaret's lost one point
already."

"I thought Margaret was taboo?"

"Oh, so she was--I beg her pardon!"  She sighed.  "'One word is too often
profaned for me to profane it,' etc."  She put her elbows on the table.
"Oh, Mike, aren't you an odd darling?  I do love teasing you.  If you
weren't so easily ragged, I wouldn't."

"Do go on with your lunch," he said.  "And don't chatter so much.  We
only have a certain amount of time for lunch and digestion.  This pie's
delicious."

"Where are we going?  When do we go on?"  Millicent was not oblivious of
the fact that he spoke of their going on as an accepted fact.

"So you don't know?  You haven't found out everything?"

"No, I knew enough to bring me to you.  That was all I wanted.  You can
tell me the rest."

Michael was silent.

"My dear man, you needn't tell me if you don't want to, but remember that
no secrets are hid from the hand that hath _baksheesh_.  I found out what
I wanted to know; I can find out more."

"I'd rather you found out," he said, "than I told you."

"Right ho!  Funny man!"

"Do you want to hear about the tomb, or don't you?"

"Oh, yes, rather!"  Millicent's teeth were busy picking the leg of a
pigeon.  "Tell me everything."

Michael told her everything he could remember, the things which he knew
would interest her, the most personal facts relating to the minute
examination of the tomb.  It was proving a great puzzle to Egyptologists.
There were many conflicting theories about it--whether the mummy which
was found on the floor beside the effigy of the dead queen was the
mummified body of the queen or not.  It had been sent away to be
carefully examined by experts; the report of the examination had not yet
been made known.  If it was the body of the queen, why had they
endeavoured to cut off the golden wrappings which had been rolled round
her body?  Why had her name been roughly cut out of the inside of the
coffin?  Why had this queen, who had been buried with such royal
magnificence, been "debarred from all benefits of the earthly prayers of
her descendants?  Why had she become a nameless outcast, a wanderer
unrecognized and unpitied in the vast underworld?" [2]

These questions had not yet been solved.  Millicent was excited and
interested and Michael enjoyed telling her about it.  She was inquisitive
and insistent.  She wanted to know all about the doings in the camp since
her visit to the Valley, and Michael thoroughly enjoyed talking to a
sympathetic, intelligent listener.  Like all Celts, he had the gift of
words.

He was so engrossed that Hassan appeared with their coffee long before he
was ready for it or expected it.  Noticing his surprise, the man
instantly took his cue.  He salaamed respectfully in front of Millicent.

"_Ta, Sitt_," he said, "will it please you to wait for another hour?  The
camels are not yet rested, the day is still young."

Millicent looked at Michael.  Time really did not matter to him one
scrap, yet she dared not hint so.  He could just as well look for this
phantom treasure a year from now.  It was all a mystic's mirage to her, a
delightful excuse for a sojourn in the outer desert.

"I'm ready if you are," she said, addressing Mike.  Her woman's tact told
her the wisdom of putting no hindrance in his way.

"If the Effendi will graciously consent, it would be wiser to remain here
for one hour more," Hassan said.  "The men are tired, also."

Michael assented.  If the beasts and the men were tired, they would wait.
The excuse was not unwelcome.  The good meal had relaxed his energies.
Hassan thanked him and silently disappeared.

Michael sipped his coffee; it was perfect.  He lit a cigarette, after
they had turned their chairs to the open front of the shelter.  Presently
Millicent slipped down from her chair and sat on the sand in front of the
tent; there was more air.  Soon Michael did the same.

They had lunched well and were friends.  A certain delicious apathy stole
over Michael, which kept him from referring to any unpleasant topics.  He
left alone the subject as to why Millicent had trapped him and forced her
company upon him.  For the time being she was good and gentle, the reason
being that she also was relaxed and inert--the result of a good meal
after a strenuous morning on camel-back.

Michael had been riding since dawn.  The temptation to let things alone
was an unconscious one; he submitted to it.

A great expanse of the desert was before them.  Millicent lay curled up,
like a golden tortoise-shell cat, in the sun; Michael, with his legs
doubled up to his chin, rested his head on his knees.  He would have been
asleep in a few minutes if Millicent had not spoken; suddenly she said:

"Look!  Surely that's my holy man, whose reasoning powers are in heaven?
There, look--far away, over there!"

Michael raised himself and looked to where she pointed.  There was
nothing to indicate any particular spot in the stretch of sand before
them.

"I can just see the tattered rags of his staff.  I'm sure it's the same
man.  Can't you see him?"

Michael looked again.  "I can only distinguish something moving in the
distance.  I can't say what it is, or if it is coming this way."

"Can't you see a thing like a flag fluttering in the air?  I can--there,
can't you see him now?"

"Yes, now I can," Michael said.  He got up from his low seat, his
energies fully alert, his drowsiness gone.  He held himself in check.  It
was absurd to appear so interested in a desert-fanatic--or an
idiot--coming across their path.  They were both common enough
occurrences in the East.

Millicent watched his face.  Why was he so thrilled, why so interested?
Michael's first impulse was to go and meet the man.  He was afraid that
he would not notice their encampment.  He was afraid that he would not
come their way.  At the same time, he was conscious that if there was any
truth in the old man's words, their meeting would come about naturally
and not by his seeking.  The "child of God" would find him out.

They waited for some time and nothing happened.  Michael's hopes abated.
The figure with the fluttering rags disappeared.  It seemed as if it had
vanished into the sands.  Michael felt disappointed.

The shelter was taken down and packed up, the lunch-basket refilled and
the camels harnessed.  Hassan appeared.

"_Ya, Sitt_, all is ready."

Nothing had been said about Millicent's plans; nothing had been said
about how she had contrived to meet Michael; no lecture had been
delivered.  The subject had been forgotten, forgotten by Michael at
least, whose interest had been absorbed in the talk about the tomb and in
the glimpse he had of the distant figure.  Millicent had not forgotten
the promised lecture, but it had been her object to make Michael forget
it.  She had gladly let the matter rest.  Why wake sleeping dogs?  She
let them lie so undisturbed that not one bark had been heard.  They slept
so soundly that her heart was full of triumph and amusement when, seated
on her camel, she took her place in Michael's cavalcade.

She had managed to get through the starting without his feeling any
annoyance at her presence.  He had simply forgotten his objection to her
accompanying him.



[1] Weigall's _Akhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt_.

[2] Weigall's _Akhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt_.




CHAPTER II

It was not until their rest at sundown that anything of unusual
interest happened to the travellers.  Their short halt while they drank
their tea had passed without incident--in fact, Millicent had drunk
hers alone on camel-back, for it had been carried in thermos flasks,
their Amon-Ra, as Hassan called the magic bottles whose contents
retained the heat with no obvious aid.

Michael had spent the time, while he drank his refreshing cup, in
consulting Abdul about their route.  The camels were not unsaddled.
About this Millicent made no demur.  She saw no earthly reason why they
should not have rested for as long as they felt inclined, but she did
not say so.  If this treasure which Michael sought had lain in its safe
hiding-place, out of sight of man, for more than two thousand years,
why should it not wait there in safety for another couple or so of
hours?  This she kept to herself; it was her wise policy to remain
_douce comme un lapin blanc_, which she did.  The night might still see
her an accepted part of Michael's cavalcade.  The adventure thrilled
her with excitement.

They had finished their evening meal, which Millicent had supplied--a
very satisfying and delicate dinner.  They had eaten it in the open
desert during the cool hours which precede sundown.  Michael had
thoroughly enjoyed it.  The evening light transformed the desert; a
heavenly Jerusalem seemed very near.  Even Millicent was obedient to
the unseen.

As the sun sank lower and lower in the heavens, their conversation
drifted towards the subject of Akhnaton's Aton worship.  The kneeling
figures of the Arabs, praying in the desert before sundown, had
introduced the topic.

They sat on until the globe of gold dropped behind the horizon--a
wonderful sight in the desert.  For a minute or two its sudden and
complete disappearance leaves the world chill and desolate; a cold hand
clutches at the human heart; a loneliness enters the soul.  God has
abandoned the world; the warmth of His love becomes a memory.

      *      *      *      *      *      *

The afterglow was at its most flamboyant; its orange and yellow,
streaked with black, suddenly became vermilion.  Lights from the
underworld struck across the desert like swords of fire; arms of flame
broke the vermilion, soaring to heaven like the fires from hell's
furnace let loose.  The anger and beauty and recklessness was
appalling.  Then with magic swiftness, during the flickering of an eye,
the horizon became one vast lake of sacrificial blood.

The transition was so unexpected, so devastating to the human mind,
that fear filled Millicent's heart.  Instinctively she had drawn a
little closer to Michael.  She craved for arms to guard her, to protect
her from the terror of the heavens.

      *      *      *      *      *      *

Like a black silhouette against the lake of blood, a human figure rose
up out of the desert, a John the Baptist, "a burning and shining
light," a voice calling in the wilderness.

As the sonorous words of the Koran were borne to them, Millicent said,
"Oh, Mike, it's my holy man!  How mysterious he looks against that
wonderful sky!"

Subconsciously Michael had been so grateful to Millicent for her
silence during the stupendous glory of the sunset that his heart was
full of gentleness towards her.

"Yes," he said.  "I see him."  Something had told him that the figure
which she had described to him during luncheon would appear again; he
was not surprised when he distinguished the staff, with its tattered
rags waving against the crimson light.

"Isn't it all wonderful, Mike!"  Her voice was reverent; the awfulness
of the heavens had humbled her.  "I was almost afraid--it seemed like
the end of the world, the sky seemed all on fire.  The destruction of
the world had begun."

"'Thy setting is beautiful, O living Aton, who guidest all countries
that they may make laudation at thy dawning and at thy setting.'"

"Are those Akhnaton's words?"

"Yes, and his constant song was, 'O Lord, how manifold are Thy works.'
Most surely he would have said so to-night."  Michael's thoughts flew
to the morning at whose dawn he had first recited to Margaret
Akhnaton's hymn to the rising sun.

Millicent did not guess that Margaret was present while they stood
together in silence, watching the blood tones grow fainter and fainter.

As they stood looking towards the horizon until all violence had left
the heavens, the desert figure drew nearer.  Millicent knew him by his
long, unkempt hair.  Even at a distance his fine white teeth gleamed
against his tanned skin.

"He's a mere skeleton," Millicent said.  "Look at him!  He's all eyes
and hair and teeth!"

"Poor creature!" Michael said.  "_He_ has certainly no flesh left to
subdue."

As they spoke, the fanatic suddenly tottered, strode forward and fell,
face downwards, on the sand of the desert.  Instinctively Michael
hurried forward to his assistance.  There was little doubt but that he
was famished and exhausted for want of food; the distances between
desert villages are immense.

"Don't go!" Millicent cried.  "Don't, Mike!  He's probably filthy and
crawling with vermin; he looked awful this morning.  I'll send two of
my men to him and I'll tell Hassan to prepare some food for him.
Hassan!  Hassan!"  Her voice was clear and far-reaching.

Abdul instantly appeared.  Hassan was busy giving orders to the men for
pitching the tents.  So quickly did Abdul come that he might have
sprung up out of the desert at her very feet.  This immediate response
to her call always made Millicent suspicious of eavesdropping.

"Abdul," she said, "the holy man we met this morning is ill.  Tell the
bearers to go to him--don't let the Effendi touch him, Hassan."

"_Aiwah, Sitt_, I will attend."  With the same breath Abdul screamed
for two of the men to come and help the saint.  They came with flying
leaps towards him.

"Mike, oh Mike!" Millicent cried.  "Please, please come back!  You are
so rash.  Abdul, don't let the Effendi touch that man.  He's filthy.  I
saw him this morning--he's a dreadful creature."

Abdul looked at the Effendi Amory's mistress, the Christian harlot.
Such a woman dared to speak in this manner of one who was favoured of
God, a blessed saint, of one to whom the devout women of his country
would willingly give themselves as an act of grace!  This child of God,
beloved of Islam, was filthy in her vile eyes!

It was in this manner that Millicent unconsciously earned the vengeance
of Abdul.  Nothing of his hatred or scorn was noticeable.  Millicent
was under the impression that all Easterns are sensualists and slaves
to beauty; she was ignorant of their profound contempt for all women;
that their vilest thoughts are for Christians.  With an outward
approval of her anxiety that Michael should run no risks by touching
the sick man, Abdul left her and hurried after the Effendi.

But Michael had already reached him; the fleshless figure lay bathed in
the dying light of the afterglow.  Hanging round his neck, a neck which
looked like the neck of the dried mummy in Freddy's wonderful tomb,
there were many strings of cheap beads, and suspended from a bright
green cord--the Prophet's green--was one white cowrie shell.  Half
covered by his garment of many colours, and jealously enclosed in a
small black cloth bag, was the most precious article of his scanty
possessions.  Michael knew that this pouch contained nothing less
valuable than a few grains of sand from the Prophet's tomb at Mecca.

At Michael's approach the fanatic raised himself and recited in
half-delirious tones the _Fat'hah_, or the opening chapter of the Koran:

"In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Gracious.  Praise be unto God,
the Lord of the worlds, the Merciful, the Gracious, the Ruler of the
day of judgment.  Thee do we worship, and of Thee do we beg assistance.
Direct us in the right way, in the way of those to whom Thou hast been
gracious, upon whom there is no wrath, and who have not erred."

When the _sura_ was finished the man fell back; his strength failed
him.  Michael knelt down beside him in the desert.  He raised his head;
his wild eyes and emaciated face touched his heart.  He knew something
of the zeal of these religious Moslems, these desert sons of Allah.
This man had obviously wasted himself to a skeleton.  Truly, his
reasoning powers were in heaven; his religious ecstasies had well-nigh
bereft him of his senses.

Michael asked him if he was ill or if he was only faint from want of
food.  The saint did not know; physical exhaustion overpowered him.  At
intervals he called loudly upon the name of Allah, in almost the same
phraseology as the ancient Egyptians called upon Amon-Ra, the Lord of
all worlds, whose seat was in the heavens.  In the unchanging East,
expressions never die.  Akhnaton taught his disciples to pray to "Our
Father, which art in Heaven."

As Michael listened to his appeals to Allah, he felt totally at a loss
to know what to do for the material benefit of the zealot.  He was
afraid that he would die from exhaustion.  He was relieved when Abdul
and the bearers came to his assistance.  Abdul soon persuaded the man
to drink some of the water which he had brought in a cup.  As he did
so, he noticed with satisfaction that the saint's head was resting on
Michael's arm, that his master was totally self-forgetful in his act of
charity.  Christian though he was, he was sincerely obeying the
teaching of the Prophet Jesus, the one sinless Prophet of Islam, the
Prophet Who, next to Mohammed, is best beloved of the faithful.
Mohammed considered Jesus sinless; to his own unrighteousness he often
alluded.  In this act of grace, at least, the Effendi had not failed
Him.

When Michael offered the man another cooling drink, he swallowed it
eagerly.  It was like the waters of paradise to his parched throat.
His flaming eyes tried to express his gratitude to his deliverer.  Who
was this heretic whose fingers had the gift of healing, from whose
heart flowed the divine waters of charity?

Michael understood.  Inspired by the love in his heart for all
suffering humanity, with something akin to the graceful imagery of
words which comes naturally to the humblest native's lips, he spoke to
the man in a suitable manner.  Rendered into English it would sound
absurd.

The servants appeared with some food which was sustaining and
appetizing, but the effort necessary for swallowing anything solid
proved too much for the exhausted pilgrim.

"Bring him to the camp, Abdul," Michael said.  "I will give him some
brandy.  As a medicine it is not forbidden?"

"No, Effendi, it is not forbidden."

The total absence of the sun had made the desert seem inhospitable and
dreary.  The saint was too weak to protest and so he was carried to the
camp.  Millicent watched the slow procession with anger and amazement.
She knew that Michael was rash and impetuous, but she had not given him
credit for being such a fool.

While he was being put to bed in a tent, and carefully attended to,
Michael tried to discover if the saint was really ill, if he was
suffering from some specific malady, or if he was merely worn out with
fatigue.  He administered a drug to him which he hoped would soothe his
nerves and allow him to sleep.

In a dog-like manner the man's tragic eyes eloquently expressed both
his astonishment and gratitude.  It was long since he had slept in a
comfortable bed, under sheets and blankets.  He rarely spoke, except to
mutter or loudly chant in a half-delirious manner _suras_ from the
Koran.

When Michael had attended to his simple wants and seen to it that his
servants were not only willing but eager to nurse him, he left him to
their care and immediately hurried off to his own tent to change his
clothes and disinfect himself as thoroughly as possible--a necessary
precaution, although the man had not been as dirty as Millicent had
depicted.  His _dilk_, or Joseph's coat, was indeed tattered and his
turban in the last stages of decay, but they were clean.  His person
was not offensive.  A pathetic figure, fleshless and worn and neurotic;
yet in the sands of the desert he had performed his ablutions before
prayer, as prescribed by the Prophet in the Holy Book.  The untrodden
sands of the desert are as cleansing and purifying as the waters of
Jordan.

When Michael at last returned to Millicent, she said quite gently,
although her inward woman burned with anger, "Mike, are you mad or a
saint?  How could you touch him?"

"I'm far from being a saint!" he said.

"You are as much one as that wretched creature, who has pretended he is
one for so long that he now believes he is."

"Or his Moslem brethren do, perhaps you mean!"

"Well, he acts up to their superstitious ideas."

"I can't tell.  He is too ill to speak.  He is probably as sincere a
Moslem as St. Jerome was a Christian--why not?"

"What's the matter with him?"  A little fear clutched at Millicent's
heart.

"I don't know--Abdul couldn't discover.  The man is too exhausted to
talk.  I'll speak to him in the morning and find out."

"I hope it's nothing infectious--you were very rash, Mike!"

"It's probably only physical exhaustion.  He couldn't eat anything, but
he drank the water I gave him.  I poured a little brandy in it--he
wouldn't have touched it if he had known."

"Oh, wouldn't he?"  Millicent's voice expressed her disbelief.

"The Koran forbids the drinking of spirits."

Millicent laughed.  "You wouldn't think so when you pass the native
cafés in Cairo!  I thought you said they lived up to the letter of
their religion, and missed the spiritual essence of it?"

"There are Moslems and Moslems.  Do we all live up to the spirit of
Christ's teachings?  Have you always seen Christ-like Christians?"

Millicent shrugged her shoulders.  "Well, I don't pretend to live up to
the spirit of my religion.  There's the comforting reflection of a
death-bed repentance for all Christians--it's never to late to mend,
Mike!"

"What about battle and murder and sudden death?"

"I take that risk.  But, honestly, dear, are you going to adopt that
fanatic, take him on with you?"

"I'm going to look after him until he's better," Michael said, "if
that's what you mean."

"You've got one _protégé_ in el-Azhar.  I wonder where this one will
find his home?"

"He will be all right in the morning.  Some food and sleep will set him
on his way again."  Michael's eyes expressed the fact that his thoughts
had travelled to Millicent's own position in his camp.  She had wished
to avoid this; she had tried to obliterate her own personality.  Her
desire was to let Mike get pleasantly accustomed to her companionship,
to her place in his camp, to her harmless presence.  She felt certain
that if she could manage it for a day or two, he would let things
slide.  It was his nature to drift.

The evening was almost at its close; night was drawing near.  The
evening star, with its one clear call, had appeared in the pale sky,
guarded by the soft pure crescent of a new moon.  The single star in
the vast heavens made a tender appeal to the hearts of both Millicent
and Michael.  It intensified their solitude.  It touched their senses
with longing.  If Margaret had been with Michael, his arms would have
encircled her.

Millicent owed her self-restraint to her calculating common sense.  To
have had a lover on such a night as this would have been a splendid
reward for all her trouble.  In her heart she called the man at her
side a fool, a pitiful fool, and herself an idiot for loving him.

"It was a beautiful idea for Mohammed's banner," Michael said at
length.  He had driven the thought even of Margaret from his mind.
Suggestion is too potent a drug.

"Was that what he took it from?" Millicent said.  "I never thought of
it before--of course, it must have been."

"He must often have watched the evening star as we are watching it now,
when he was a boy living in the desert.  Later on, when he became the
warrior prophet, he must have visualized the heavens as the background
of his banner, and taken the evening star and the crescent moon as his
symbols--the star and the crescent of Islam."  Michael paused.  "In the
same way, the full rays of the sun became the symbol of Aton,
Akhnaton's god and loving father."

"Your friend?" Millicent said eagerly; it pleased her that Michael
should speak of the things nearest his heart.  He was allowing her to
approach him.

Michael laughed.  "And yours, too, I hope?"

"Why?"  Millicent's heart quickened.

"Because Akhnaton was the first man to preach simplicity, honesty,
frankness and sincerity, and he preached it from a throne.  He was the
first Pharaoh to be a humanitarian, the first man in whose heart there
was no trace of barbarism." [1]

"Really?" Millicent said.  Michael's earnestness forbade levity.  "How
interesting!  Do tell me more about him."

"He was the first human being to understand rightly the meaning of
divinity."

"But what he taught didn't last.  We owe nothing to his doctrines, do
we?  Did it ever spread beyond his own kingdom?"

"Like other great teachers, he sacrificed all to his principles.  Yet
there can be no question that his ideals will hold good 'till the swan
turns black and the crow turns white, till the hills rise up and travel
and the deeps rush into the rivers.'  That's how Weigall ends up the
life he has written of the great reformer.  How can you say that we owe
nothing to him?  You might as well say that we owe nothing to any of
the great men of whom we have never heard, and yet you know that
thought affects the whole world.  Akhnaton made himself immortal by his
prophecies--they were the eternal truths revealed to him by God."

"By a prophet, do you mean that he was a prophet like Moses, Jeremiah,
Isaiah and so on?"

"I mean that prophets were the seers to whom God communicated
knowledge.  Prophets were the people to whom He made revelations; he
enlightened their minds; He certainly revealed Himself to Akhnaton, or
how else could he, in that age of darkness, have evolved for himself an
almost perfect conception of divinity?  Weigall says 'he evolved a
monotheist's religion second only to Christianity itself in its purity
of tone.'  If God had not revealed Himself to Akhnaton as He did later
on to Moses and Abraham, and as I believe He still does to our true
reformers, how could he, as Weigall says, have evolved his beautiful
religion 'in an age of superstition, and in a land where the grossest
polytheism reigned absolutely supreme'?"

"And are you now on your way to visit his tomb, Mike?  How thrilling!"

"Yes," Michael said.  He answered her simply, forgetful of the fact
that she could only have obtained her information on this point in an
underhand manner.

"You know where it is?"

"He was buried in the hills which lie beyond his city."

"Tel-el-Amarna?"

"Yes, the City of the Horizon, the capital he built when he found it
necessary for the progress of his new religion to get away from Thebes,
from the priests of Amon-Ra."

Michael's thoughts became absorbed.  They travelled to the mid-African
in el-Azhar and then became mixed up with this meeting with the
desert-saint.  Could this poor, emaciated figure, so shrunken and worn
with tropical fevers and famished for want of food, have any knowledge
of the hidden treasure which the seer had visualized?

Millicent allowed his thoughts to wander.  She knew the force of silent
companionship.  She knew that, although he was apparently far from her,
he was conscious of her presence.  She would have liked to ask him a
thousand questions, to have talked rather than held her peace; but her
instinct as a woman forbade it.  Something told her that during their
talk Michael was one half saint, one half man, and the man-power was
stronger than he knew.

Many stars had appeared in the sky, which had deepened.  It was now the
violet-blue of a desert night.  The passion of the heavens was
beginning.  Could man and woman remain outside it?

In the distance an occasional roar from one of the camels interrupted
the silence.  Surely it was a night for love, the love that needs no
telling?

Millicent and Michael were seated on the sand, gazing into the
deepening heavens.  Michael was sorely disturbed.

"Could anything be more Eastern?" Millicent said dreamily.  In speech
she had to walk very carefully.  Her mystic baffled her.

"Nothing," Michael said.  "Isn't it sad to think what city-dwellers
miss?"

"I love even the roar of the camels, don't you?"  Her eyes were looking
at the animals, as they knelt at rest in the distance, their long day's
journey done.  What stored-up revenge their roars suggest!  They always
seem to say, "My day will come, if it is yours to-day."

"Let's think of the most English thing we can, Mike," she said
suddenly, "just by way of contrast."

They thought for a moment or two in silence.  The arid desert was
softened by the absence of the sun, its desolation was made more
manifest.  At night even more than by day, you could feel the immensity
of its distance, its silent rolling from ocean to ocean.  Nothing
speaks to man's heart more eloquently than the voice of perfect silence.

For the sake of prudence Michael was consenting to Millicent's
suggestion to think of the most English scene he could.  Was it a
village public-house, full of hearty English yokels, drinking their
evening tankards of beer?  This was about the time they would assemble.
He had not yet formed his picture into words, Millicent had not spoken,
when suddenly Abdul appeared and begged permission to speak to his
master.

The sick man was better; he had eaten some food and was conscious.
Abdul had evidently some information which was for his master's ear
alone.  He politely inferred that he could not say it before the
honourable lady.

Michael rose from his seat beside Millicent, who, being wise in her
generation, said: "Then I will say good-night and go to bed.  I am very
tired."

"Good-night," Michael said brightly, while a sudden sense of relief
came to his heart.  "I think you are very wise.  You must be quite
tired out."

"So far, so good," Millicent said when she was alone.  "What a weird
mystic I've attached myself to!"  She alluded to Michael, not to the
Moslem saint.

Her camp-outfit was so complete that in her desert bedroom there was
scarcely an item missing which could ensure her comfort.  She
contemplated going to bed with enjoyment.  Where money is, there also
are the fleshpots of Egypt, even if it is in the waterless tracts of
the Arabian desert.

Material comforts meant very much to Millicent.  She enjoyed using all
the little accessories belonging to a fastidious woman's toilet; she
enjoyed, too, the occupation of expending care on her person.  Her
rising up and lying down were ceremonies which she performed with
unremitting attention.  In her tent in the desert her perfumes and
cosmetics and bath-salts afforded her a curious satisfaction.  They
told her that her management had been perfect; they appealed to her
barbaric love of contrasts.  It fed her pride very pleasantly to know
that she could command these luxuries; to know that by her own wealth
she could bring the trivialities of civilization into the elemental
life of the desert excited her senses.

Her natural beauty could have triumphed over the ravages made by the
sun and the dry desert air.  She was one of those fortunate women who
needed few, if any, of the absurdities which she carried about with her
wheresoever she went.  To have done without them would have been to
deprive herself of a very genuine pleasure, to have starved one of her
eager appetites.  Margaret's rapid tub, the swift brushing and combing
and plaiting of her dark hair, generally while she read some passage
from a book which interested her, and her total disregard for
cosmetics, would have horrified Millicent if she had known of her
habits.  The height of civilization to Millicent was expressed in a
luxuriously-appointed dressing-table and in an excessive care of her
body.  Progress touched its high-water mark in the perfection of her
creature comforts.  Taken from this standpoint, progress could scarcely
go any further, or so Michael would have thought if he had watched her
ritual of going to bed.

She dawdled pleasantly through it, enjoying every moment of the time,
appreciating the handling of artistically-designed silver objects,
performing with care the washing of her face with oatmeal and the
dusting of her fair skin with the latest luxury in powder.  She liked
to take the same care of her person as a young mother takes of her
first baby, and--as she expressed it--to smell like one when the
ceremony was finished.

Her love of contrasts appealed to her, when she stood, all ready for
bed in her foolish nightgown--a mere veil of chiffon--becomingly
guarded by a Japanese kimono of the softest silk.  She visualized the
timeless desert outside her tent, the trackless ocean of silence, the
uninhabited primitive world.  She felt like a queen, travelling in
state through a waterless, foodless world.

She held up her empty arms.  Some other night!  Some other night!  Her
heart assured her.  With a sigh of content she lay down to sleep, well
satisfied with her own diplomacy and cunning.  Her last conscious
thoughts were of Margaret Lampton.  What was she doing to-night?  What
were her thoughts?

      *      *      *      *      *      *

Late that night, as Abdul passed the Englishwoman's tent, he spat at
her door.



[1] Weigall's _Akhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt_.




CHAPTER III

What was Margaret doing that night?

Many days had passed since she had heard from Michael, but there was
nothing in that to cause her anxiety.  She did not expect to hear from
him after his desert journey had begun, except by happy chance.  If he
passed a desert mail-carrier, he would give him a letter to be posted
when he arrived at the nearest town.

A desert mail-carrier is a weird object to Western eyes or to the eyes
of a city-dweller.  Almost naked, he travels across the desert on swift
camels, carrying a long sword for the protection of the royal mails.

So far Margaret had received no desert letter.  Her days had passed
smoothly and swiftly, for Freddy had kept her hard at work.  Each day
her interest in his work intensified; the more she learned of
Egyptology and of archaeology generally, the more wholly absorbing it
became.  She had developed into a very essential member of the camp.

With splendid common sense and determination, she had succeeded in
throwing herself body and soul into the work which filled her days.
She had made up her mind when she parted with Michael that not even by
thought would she retard his work and mission.  When she allowed her
mind to travel to him, it was to convey currents of stimulating love
and encouragement.  If thoughts are things, as he always told her, then
the things her thoughts were to give him must be happiness and
confidence.  Keeping this steadily before her, she had spent healthy,
happy days with her brother.  In their sympathies and interests they
had drawn even closer together.  Strangers might well have taken them
for lovers, so eagerly did they look forward each morning to their long
evening to be spent together.  There was very little time for play;
their days were made up of hard, exacting work.

Experts were busy forming their opinions and writing their official
reports upon the contested subjects connected with the tomb.  The
mythological and archaeological finds in it were of exceptional
interest.

On this night, when Millicent in the eastern desert had held up her
arms to the heavens and questioned the unseen, Margaret had gone early
to bed.  For some reason--perhaps owing to the great heat of the day
and to the airlessness of the chamber of the tomb where she had been
painting, she had felt a bit "nervy," as she had expressed her state of
being to Freddy.  She had tried to read, but had failed.  Her thoughts
had wandered; her memory had retained nothing of what she had read; at
the end of a paragraph she knew as little of what it had been about as
though she had never read it.  Concentration was beyond her power.

"I'm only wasting time, Freddy," she said after a last desperate effort
to concentrate her thoughts on her book.  "I'm going to bed.  If I
talked, I'd probably grouse--that's how I feel."

"Right you are, old girl.  I'll soon be off, too.  How'd you like to go
to Luxor for a few days?"

"Oh, no, Freddy!"  Meg's whole being rejected the idea.

"All right--only don't get the jumps."

"A good sleep will put me right," she bent her head as she passed her
brother and lightly kissed his glittering hair.  He was busy with a
plan, of extraordinarily minute details.  "You're such a dear, Freddy."

"Rot!"

"You are, a thumping old dear."

"Don't you worry, old girl.  Mike's all right.  Bad news travels on
bat's wings, so they say.  You'd have heard long before this if
anything was wrong."

It was just like Freddy to understand.  Meg felt cheered.  She sat
herself down beside him, quite close to his elbow, and watched him for
some moments.  They were perfectly silent.  Freddy's practical,
healthy, buoyant personality soothed her.  Her big love for him brought
a sudden lump to her throat.  Happy tears dimmed her sight.  Hungrily
she pressed his arm close to hers and rubbed her cheek against his
coat.  The next moment she had left the room.

Freddy's eyes followed her.  "Not the life for a girl, somehow," he
said, a line of worry puckering his forehead, and for a few moments his
thoughts deserted his work.  It became faulty; he had to use his
india-rubber over and over again.  It was Meg's vision of Akhnaton that
had intruded itself upon his work; he must drag his thoughts back again.

Meg had told him about her vision.  Before the tomb had been opened,
Freddy would have completely pooh-poohed the whole thing.  He gave no
real credence to it now; still, there was a subtle difference in his
attitude towards the whole subject of the supernatural.  His mind did
not so completely reject it as he thought.  The extraordinary exactness
of the seer's vision of the inside of the tomb had not been without its
effect.  He also knew how constantly and ardently Akhnaton had prayed
that his spirit might "go forth to see the sun's rays," that his "two
eyes might be opened to see the sun," that he might "obtain a sight of
the beauty of each recurring sunrise."

      *      *      *      *      *      *

When Meg went to bed, she slept soundly, very soundly.  She must have
been asleep for some hours when suddenly she awoke with unusual
alertness.  The intensity of her dream had wakened her.  She had heard
Michael's voice crying, as though it were vainly trying to reach her.
It was as clear as the overseer's whistle each morning; it had wakened
her just as suddenly.  The anguish of his soul came to her out of the
silence.  Three times he had called her distinctly.

She started up, with the words "Yes, Mike, I'm coming."  They were said
before she realized that she was separated from him by the Valley and
the river and the eastern desert.

Sitting up in bed she listened.  Everything was still.  She jumped out
of bed and looked out of the window.  The stars in the sky shone down
on the hills which covered the sleeping Pharaohs as they had shone when
Michael had told her that he loved her, as they had shone before the
Valley became a city of the dead.

Margaret slipped on her dressing-gown and opened the door.  She went
quietly out and stood in front of the hut, with eyes raised to the
heavens.  She felt as if her heart was bursting with the prayers that
filled it.  What could she do?  Nothing--nothing but give herself up to
God, open her heart and reveal its burden to the Lord of all worlds,
trust her inarticulate prayers to His everlasting mercy.  Very softly
she whispered, almost ashamed of her own impotence, "I want to go to
Michael.  Allow my spirit to console him."

Her hands were clenched.  An imploring agony held her unconscious of
all else but her desire to get outside herself and appear to her lover.
She had no more words; speech was needless.  Her wants were as
infinitely beyond the limits of speech, as infinity is beyond our
conception of space or time.

For a few minutes she stood lost in the one thought.  And who shall say
in what name her prayer was answered by the divine mercy?

Gradually a subtle untightening of her muscles relaxed her hands even
while they remained folded.  Something had gone out of her.  Was it
virtue?  Unconscious of her material self, for her thoughts had not yet
returned from their mission of healing, she remained standing in the
same attitude of appeal.

Suddenly her imagination folded her in her lover's arms.  She heard him
say, "My beautiful Meg, the stars adore you!"

And she answered, "I am with you, Mike, just as I was on that night
when your love made a new world for me.  You called to me and so I
came.  Your arms are round me. . . .  I can hear your voice."

Margaret sighed.  Consciousness of her material surroundings was
returning.  She heard a step behind her; someone was present.  It was
Freddy.

"What are you doing, Meg?" he said anxiously.

She turned swiftly to him.  "Oh, Freddy, Michael wanted me.  My dream
was too real not to have some meaning.  I couldn't bear it--I had to
try to help him!"

"You were dreaming?  You were in bed?"

"Yes, and sound asleep.  Suddenly he called me.  It was extraordinarily
real."  Meg put her hands up to her head as though it was tired.

"But you can't help him by standing out here.  It's too chilly."

Meg shivered.  "It is cold," she said wearily.  "And I'm awfully tired."

Freddy linked his arm through his sister's.  "Let's sit and talk
together indoors, for a bit.  Have a cigarette?"

Meg thanked him with tired eyes.  Freddy put his hands on her shoulders
as she sank into a deck-chair, and looked into her eyes.  "No more
visions, old girl?"

"No, Freddy, oh no, no vision."  Meg spoke dreamily, absently, and with
an exhaustion which worried her brother.

"Then why so tired?"

"I don't know.  I suppose it was my dream.  I feel as if I'd travelled
for days and days!"

"Look here, you're going to have some of this."  Freddy poured out a
small portion of brandy into a glass and made her swallow it.  "The
desert plays the dickens with the strongest nerves.  Don't be so rash
again, Meg."

"I promise."  Meg swallowed the brandy and Freddy lit her cigarette.
With a tact she little dreamed of he contrived to divert her thoughts
into a channel far removed from the eastern desert and personal matters.

The news from home for the last few weeks had been far from
satisfactory.  English politics seemed to revolve round the atrocious
acts of the suffragettes who believed in the militant policy and the
disturbances in Ireland.  Freddy's sympathies, of course, were with
Ulster; the Nationalists and Sinn Feiners belonged to the unemployable
unemployed class of agitators who "walk on their heads."

When at last the brother and sister parted, Meg was restored both in
mind and body to her normal healthy condition.




CHAPTER IV

When Michael entered the sick man's tent, he was surprised to find how
much better he seemed.  He had regained a little strength and partial
consciousness.  But he was still weak and suffering from the effects of
malarial fever, or so Michael imagined, though he was articulate and
his mind seemed to be clearing.

The more Michael saw of him the more sure he was that he was neither an
idiot nor a lunatic, nor one of the class in the East whose flagrant
acts of immorality do not affect their fame for sanctity.  Certainly
his thoughts and reasoning powers appeared still to be in heaven, but
that was because he was a religious zealot.  Of the genuineness of his
piety there could be no doubt.  The impostors and charlatans who bring
discredit upon the term "holy man," who trade upon the credulity of the
natives, do not seek the wastes of the arid eastern desert.  The
neighbourhood of hospitable villages and cities suits their profession
and tastes better.

The saint had requested of Abdul that he might thank the Effendi for
his charity.  Before sunrise he wished to leave the tent.

As Michael approached him, he called out in a weak but sonorous voice a
_sura_ from the Koran:


"'Verily those who do deeds of real kindness shall drink of a cup
tempered with camphor.'"


The word camphor (_kafier_), which is derived from the word _kafr_,
means to "suppress or cover."  Michael understood.  The quaffing of
camphor, as spoken of in the Koran, is supposed to subdue unlawful
passions; it cleanses the heart; it rids man's mind of all material
desires.

"I thank you, O my father."  Michael used the ordinary form of a Moslem
in addressing one of a higher spiritual station than himself.  In Egypt
even the native Christians reverence Moslem saints or holy men.  They
pay frequent visits to them to ask for counsel and to hear their
prophecies, to beg a hair of them in memory, "and dying, mention it
within their wills, bequeathing it as a rich legacy unto their issue."
Any relic of a venerated saint is worn as a protection from evil.

Quite apart from Michael's feeling on the subject as to whether this
desert fanatic would prove of any real assistance to him on his
journey, he had no inclination to scoff at his religious zeal.  Were
there not St. Jeromes, who lived in the desert and trusted to the
ravens of the air to feed them?  Were passions in the desert not known
before the days of Mohammed?  Why should saints no longer exist?

It seemed to him very wonderful that this semi-conscious Arab should
have chosen a text from the Koran so singularly appropriate to his
condition.  There were hundreds of _suras_ familiar to Michael,
relating to the benefits to be received by the faithful who performed
disinterested acts of charity.  "Do good to the creatures of God, for
God loves those who do good."  These words came to his mind as more
suitable, as referring only to his hospitality to the fainting
wayfarer.  Or again, "The truly righteous are those who, in order to
please God, assist their kindred out of their wealth, and support the
orphans and take care of the needy, and give alms to the wayfarer."

In the moral conditions of the Koran, there are many _suras_ relating
to charity, the love which covers a multitude of sins.  Yet he had told
Michael that because of his love for one of God's creatures he would
"drink of a cup tempered with camphor."  Had the sick man a seer's
vision?  Had he read the secrets of his, Michael's, heart?

Or might it have been that already Abdul had confided to him the gossip
of the camp?  Had his seer's eyes told him who lay in the white tent,
the white tent whose open door so persistently invited him to turn in?

He rejected the idea that the saint's apt choice of a text could have
been mere accident.  To Michael there was no such thing as chance.
Nothing is unessential, nothing unforeseen by the All-seeing.

He spoke to the saint seriously and sympathetically of his condition
and tried to persuade him that he was too weak to travel.  He must rest
for one whole day, and after that he must allow Michael to see him on
his journey.  To Michael's offer of hospitality and help on his
pilgrimage, he again answered by quoting the Koran:

"'Verily to the "favoured of God" no fear shall come, nor shall they
grieve.'"


His eyes, lit with spiritual fire, expressed his complete confidence in
divine protection.

Michael expressed his belief that God did look after those who were
specially favoured of Him, but he asked if it might not be that it was
by God's guidance that he, Michael, had been permitted to offer one
specially beloved of Allah the rest he so greatly needed?  If it was
not also decreed by Allah that the saint should remain in his tent
until he was stronger?

"Whither are you going, O my son?  If Allah wills it we shall not part."

Michael described his geographical destination; he did not mention the
real mission of his journey.

"What seek you there, O my son?"

"The tomb of a holy man."

"An infidel or a child of Allah?"

"Of a prophet, O my father, a prophet to whom God revealed himself even
before the days of Moses, a prophet born in Egypt, who lost his distant
kingdoms to gain his own soul."

"Your heart is full of charity, O my son.  In the name of the Lord, the
Compassionate, the Merciful, may the divine light surround you."

"If I acknowledge but one God, O my father, and truly love Him, I must
love all things that He has created, for without Him was not anything
made that is in heaven or on earth."

"Truly said, O my son.  And praise be to Allah! you are no infidel.
You worship but the one God Who is the Lord of the worlds.  The
ignorant infidels--Allah have mercy on their souls!--give the Prophet
Jesus equal glory with the God Almighty, they divide the honours which
belong to God alone."

"There are many seekers after the truth, O my father.  Are there not
many roads to heaven?"

"To all who do truly seek the light, God will be revealed to them.  He
will cover them with His mercy, He will join them to the companionship
on high.  God's mercy extends to every sinner, He provides for even
those who deny Him."

The fanatic fell back on his pillow exhausted.  Michael waited for a
moment, until his religious excitement had abated.  Feebly words came
from his parched lips.

"Great is Thy Name, great is Thy Greatness.  There is no God but Thee."

Michael poured a little moisture down his throat.  He swallowed it
eagerly; his thirst was pathetic.  After waiting for a few minutes
beside the silent figure, Michael rose to go.  One of the servants must
come and look after him and watch by him during the night; he was too
ill to be left alone.

Suddenly the saint called to him.  "_Henâ_ (here)."  He wished Michael
to bend his head nearer to his lips; his voice was weak.  His splendid
eyes glowed with the fire of spiritual triumph.  Michael watched him
raise his hand up to his head.  It was for some reason, for it was not
without effort that he guided his first finger to his fine,
delicately-shaped ear, the concha of which was very large.  There
seemed to be something hidden in it which he was endeavouring to take
out.

Michael tried to help him.  Had he stowed away some relic of
exceptional value in the opening of his ear, or was it giving him pain?
The saint did not answer.  Michael stood in silence until the thing was
extracted.  It was a little pellet of tissue-paper.

The saint put his finger to his lips, to caution Michael to be silent.
With trembling fingers he unwrapped the tiny packet.  It was so small
that probably it contained an atom of hair reputed to have been cut
from the Prophet's beard.

When the object was unrolled, the saint said, "_Henâ_," and tried to
reach Michael's hand.  Michael placed his right hand in the two
emaciated ones of the fanatic.  Something hard was pressed into his
palm, and his fingers were jealously folded over a tiny object.  When
it was safely in his keeping, the saint fell back on his pillow,
muttering a _sura_ from the Koran.

"'Give your kindred what they require in time of need and also to the
poor and the traveller, but waste not your substance wastefully.'"


Michael opened his hand and looked at what the zealot had placed in it.
He was thrilled with curiosity to see what the precious relic could be.
He recognized the greatness of the honour which had been bestowed upon
him.

When he saw what it was, he was too astonished to speak.  Wonder robbed
him of words.  A crimson amethyst, uncut and of ancient smoothness, lay
like a large drop of blood in his hand.  With half-believing eyes he
gazed at it.  Still in silence and with doubting senses, he turned it
over with the fingers of his left hand.  Had the holy man performed a
miracle?  How could he have become possessed of an ancient gem of such
rare beauty and size?  Michael had often seen conjurers raise up
palm-trees and flowers on the deck of a steamer, out of a pot full of
sand; a wave of their magic wand had transformed the deck of the
steamer into a flowery garden.  But this poor sick wanderer was no
trickster.

Michael held up the amethyst to a lamp.  It seemed to him a stone of
great value.  As it was uncut, he could only judge by its colour.
There might be some flaw which he could not see.  He tried to put it
back into the sick man's hands.

"Keep it, my son, it is safer with you.  I could not use it for the
benefit of mankind, for the wayfarer and the needy, and for myself I
have no wants which Allah in His mercy does not supply.  His children
suffer no greater privations than they can bear."

Michael still pressed the jewel back into his hand.  He could not and
would not accept it.  At his refusal the fanatic became excited and
distressed.

"It is easy for me, my son, to find many more such jewels, and also
much fine gold, the pure gold of Ethiopia.  Allah has had hidden
treasures laid up in the desert for such of His favoured children as
require them."

The words came curiously to Michael's ears, for he had in his
subconscious mind anticipated them.  Yet his material mind regarded
them as fantastic imagination due to the man's abnormal condition.  The
unpolished jewel had probably been given to him by a devout Moslem, who
imagined that he had derived some benefit from a visit which he had
paid to the saint.  His subconscious mind pressed the question:

Had this poor creature, dressed in rags, whose famished body had fallen
in the sands, exhausted by his perpetual mortification of the flesh,
found Akhnaton's buried treasure?  Had he resisted the gold and
precious jewels which he had found there?  Had he only carried away
this one crimson amethyst to prove to Michael that his theory was
correct?  Was it a beautiful link in the long chain of ordained events,
an act of the divine law?

The idea seemed incredible.  Yet the saint had spoken simply and
sincerely, as if he never doubted but that Allah, in His all-seeing
mercy, had provided this mine of wealth for the use of His favoured.

Was this gem which the saint had carried in his ear an actual and
tangible proof of the treasure he was seeking?  Had the saint actually
seen and touched the wealth of gold and the jewels which Akhnaton's
hands had hidden in the hills near his tomb?  Others besides Michael,
students of Egyptology, had treasured the idea that the heretic King,
knowing that his days were numbered, and that when he was dead
everything in his fair city would be stolen and desecrated, taken to
Thebes and there turned into wealth for the gods of Amon, had hid from
his enemies his private hoard of jewels and gold.

A glorious excitement overwhelmed Michael.  His thoughts travelled on
the wings of light.  But he must be practical; he must determine how it
was best to question the saint, to gather from him the most helpful
information on the subject.  It would be no easy matter, for it would
be unwise to express any marked curiosity about the hidden treasure or
to show his personal desire to find it.

With great self-control he concealed his intense interest and
excitement.  For the present it was best to let the saint's words about
the treasure pass unquestioned.  Very tactfully and with gentleness he
persuaded him to keep the amethyst until they parted.  In the morning,
if he was really strong enough to go on his way and if he still wished
him to accept the gem, he would do so.

With this the fanatic was contented.  He wrapped up the gem which had
once belonged to the heretic Pharaoh, whose one and only God was Aton,
and replaced it in its strange jewel-case.

      *      *      *      *      *      *

When Michael left the tent where the saint lay, he turned his back on
the encampment.  He wished to be alone.  His thoughts were bewildering.
He turned his back upon the encampment because the crouching man in him
knew that in the camp was the white tent of the woman.  If he passed
it, would the primitive man in him spring up and force him to turn in?

"Turn in, turn in, my lord, and he did turn in."  How the words had
kept ringing in his ears.

Alone in the desert he must drink of the cup tempered with camphor.
Henceforth his one thought and object must be the finding of the
treasure he had journeyed thus far to discover.  The saint's news had
so excited him that he wished that he could waken all the sleeping
servants and order Abdul to begin their journey.  Action would drive
the white tent and its persistent call out of his mind.  The sky was so
light that they could easily see to travel.

His nerves chafed at the unnecessary delay.  And yet he must not hurry,
for his mind foresaw great difficulty, even in the matter of persuading
the holy man to travel with them.

The seer at el-Azhar had promised him that a "child of God" would lead
him.  If he waited and trusted and just let things take their course,
all things would come right.  Haste comes of the devil--a true Eastern
proverb, a warning far too little regarded by the Western children of
speed.  But his conscience rebuked him.  Had he verily been one of
those who do deeds of real kindness?  Was he worthy to drink of the cup
tempered with camphor?  Had his deed been sincerely inspired by
disinterested love towards his fellow-beings?  Had it not been so
mingled and mixed up with his anxiety to find the hidden treasure that
he had gladly seized the opportunity of offering help to the wayfarer,
hoping that he might prove to be the very child of God who was to guide
him to the secret spot?

Yet surely, in doing this deed of kindness, even though it was affected
by self-interest, he had already drunk of the cup tempered with
camphor?  The desires of his frail human flesh, desires which had had
their renaissance since Millicent's appearance, were they quite
banished?  Had the woman in her white tent meant nothing to him?  As if
in contradiction to his words, he flung himself on the sand.  A voice
cried within him.

What was he to do with the woman?  Oh, God, what was he to do with her?
Spiritually he emptied his arms of her and flung her far from him on
the sands.  All day her presence had been too near him--oh, God, far
too near!  She was there in her tent, a beautiful vision.  Her eyes, as
violet as the night sky, invited him.  Her voice, soft with love, wooed
him.  It cried again and again: "Turn in, my lord, turn in!"

His knowledge of the East told him that the whole camp expected him to
visit the white tent that night.  He was no St. Anthony in their eyes,
resisting his temptation.

For one moment his mind enjoyed the satisfaction of her beauty.  The
cup tempered with camphor was rudely dashed from his lips.  Some unseen
hand had offered him instead the deep red wine of passion.  With the
sudden violence of a southern wind gathering swiftly over the desert,
his emotions were tossed and driven.  As the sands lift and rise from
the flatness of the desert into one obliterating column before the
traveller's eyes, so had his vision of the woman obliterated every
other thought from his mind.  In the limitless desert there was nothing
but the one white tent of the woman.

In his vision he saw the crimson amethyst hanging from a chain round
her neck.  On her white breast it lay like a full drop of pigeon's
blood.  Where had this idea come from?  Unsought, undesired, what had
forced it with merciless vividness before his eyes?  What part of him
responded to her caresses of thanks?  What had Akhnaton's jewel to do
with his profane vision?

St. Anthony had never deserved his temptation less.  With the distant
glimpse of the white tent which he had caught on his way from the sick
man, desire had stormed the citadel of his soul.  Its hidden forces had
surprised and overwhelmed the unsuspecting Michael.  It held him in its
grip.

In his agony of spirit he cried aloud.  "Margaret!  Margaret!
Margaret, if you love me, come to me!"

He pressed his body more closely to the desert sand.  Let the great
Mother Earth enfold him.

With all the stars in the heavens shining down upon him, and the clear
sky purifying a world of desolation, Michael lay purging his mind,
cleansing his heart.  The white tent became very distant, a mere speck
on his mental horizon.

Suddenly his senses became alert; he felt a presence very close to him.
No footfall on the sand had warned him that he was no longer alone; he
was simply conscious that some one was standing by his side.  He jumped
up, anxious to see who it was; he had been lying face downwards on the
sand.  No one was there.  He listened.  Surely he had not been
mistaken?   Someone had touched him gently with their hands, some
presence had come quite close to him.  He was conscious that a feeling
of peace had come to him, as if virtue had passed into him from those
unseen hands.  Then suddenly he knew that Margaret was beside him; they
were standing together as they had stood together on the night when
they plighted their troth.  He could hear her saying, "I have come to
you, Mike.  You called me and so I came."  He could feel the divine
beauty of her passion, the exquisite wonder of her love.  Her presence
was as real and helpful to him as though his arms encircled her
material body.

In the midst of his happiness a sense of shame overwhelmed him.
Margaret had come to him because she understood; his sense of shame
evoked her sympathy.  He heard her say, "But Mike, I shall understand.
I think something outside myself will help me to understand."

He could see her starlit face.  He remembered how he had turned it up
to the heavens and said, "You beautiful Meg, the stars adore you!"  His
own words rang in his ears.

She had come to help him to make his love for her still more complete.
She was with him still.  He enfolded her in his arms and wept out his
passion on her breast.




CHAPTER V

"Let's begin where we left off yesterday, Mike," Millicent said.

They had finished their lunch and were sitting in the desert watching
the "common or garden" day's idleness of the inhabitants of a Bedouin
camp.  The tents were huddled together under the shade of some
feathery-leaved palm-trees, a typical desert homestead.

They had made a short excursion from the site of their own camp, for
the sick man's condition had necessitated their halting for at least
one whole day.

Subtly conscious of the fact that Satan finds some mischief even in the
desert for idle hands to do, Michael had suggested a picnic to a small
oasis which lay to the west of their route.  Millicent and her dragoman
and her servants still formed a part of his camp; her splendid supply
of food and medicines was so valuable for the saint that Michael's
silent consent to her presence had been given.  Again he was drifting.

"Let us return to where we left off yesterday," referred to her
suggestion of the evening before that they should tell each other of
the most English thing they could imagine, things seen in England as in
comparison to things seen in Egypt.

It was a typically Eastern scene which lay before them--the yellow
sands of the Arabian desert, the dark palm-trees and the picturesque
Bedouins idling under the shelter of the palms.  Not one of the group
was occupied.  Some goats and a great number of naked children were
lying about on the sand.  The purple shadows of the palm-trees
intensified the bareness of the sunny desert.

One little figure, with a very protruding stomach, and a very large
white metal disc on her dark chest for her only article of attire,
suddenly appeared in front of them.  Silently she had risen up out of
the hot sand at their feet.  Her big eyes stared at the two strange
beings whom she had been brave enough to approach.  When Millicent
spoke to her she screamed and flew back to her mother's side.  The
woman looked like a man, clean-limbed and as tanned as leather.  Her
tent was supported by two sticks; to enter it she had to bend almost
double.

The naked child had appeared so suddenly and it had run away so
swiftly, that Millicent laughed like a child.  It really was a
delicious bit of nature.  The metal disc shone like a small sun.

"What a 'tummy'!" she said.  Her laughter was contagious.  "Just like a
baby blackbird's before it has got its feathers.  And that big silver
disc!--like the family plate on the family chest."

"It's protection from all evil, poor wee mite."

"What a filthy-looking hovel," Millicent said.  "Worse than a
gipsy-tent in England."

"And yet it's a home," Michael said.  "And there are no more passionate
lovers of home than these tent-women, or more hospitable people."

"Do these date-trees bear fruit?"  Millicent asked the practical
question irrelevantly.  Her mind was charged with new interests, while
her eyes looked at the soaring trees.  The tent-dwellers interested
her.  She would like to have questioned them about all sorts of
intimate subjects.

"Rather!  These people pay taxes, too."

"Really?  Isn't there any spot on the globe where people can just live
as they like, where they can get away from income-tax and authorities?"

"I don't know if the Bedouins pay any tent-taxes, but I suppose that if
they didn't aspire to owning date-palms, they could live in the arid
desert without paying anybody anything.  It's the old, old, unchanging
subject--water."

Millicent lapsed into silence.  Her chin was resting on her hands; she
was lying face downwards on the sand.  Michael was resting beside her.
Hassan and the few servants they had taken with them to attend to their
picnic-lunch were fast asleep.  The camels and mules made a picturesque
note in the distance.  On Millicent's camel a pale blue sheepskin rug
covered the fine saddle; it looked like a patch of the heavens dropped
down to earth.

"I know what is the most English thing I can think of," she said, "the
most English thing compared to all this Easternness--how I adore it,
Mike!"

"The English thing you've thought of, or the Easternness?"

"Oh, the Easternness.  England's placid and fat and bountiful, but all
this throbbing emptiness----!"

"Tell me your English scene," he said.  Something in Millicent's eyes
drove him into speech.  He, too, knew the throbbing silence, the
solitude that thunders, the emptiness that is full of passion.

"Well, first look at that tent and at those lazy, straight,
brown-limbed women--they are just a bit of nature.  Summer and winter,
autumn and spring, will never change the scene.  Look at that ocean of
sand, and the moving heat, passing like a wave over the desert.  Take
off your blue glasses, Mike, and dare to look at the sun.  Face your
great God Aton--look Him in the face."

Michael was silent, but he took off his blue glasses.  He was no eagle;
his eyes shrank from the world of blinding, unlimited light.

"Now visualize a wee robin 'flirting,' as Wells says, across a green
English lawn."

The suggestion called up a thousand memories.  A cloud of home-sickness
dimmed the brightness of the sun.  Michael could see a green, green
lawn and the figure of his mother busy at her flower-beds; the robin's
flirting was growing bolder; it was peeping up into her very face!  The
smell of moisture came to his nostrils.

"Nothing is more English than an English robin, Mike!  In the autumn,
when it comes near the house, what a darling it is--so well-turned-out,
so fearless of humans!"

"Nothing," Mike said, "unless it's my mother herself, in her gardening
gloves, cutting off the dead heads from the rose-beds."

"But she's Irish!"

"Well, I meant British.  When you said things seen in England I
visualized _my_ robin in Ireland, juicy, green, luscious Ireland!"

"Tell me about Ireland," Millicent said lightly.  As she spoke, she
made a hole in the sand; she pushed her hand and wrist into it--her
gloves were off.  She drove it in still further, until her elbow only
was above the sand; her arm was buried in the desert.

"Take care of sand-flies," Michael said.  Millicent's sleeve was rolled
up.

"Are there any here?  I've not been troubled with them."

"No, probably not--they are the plague of Upper Egypt."

"They were awful at Assuan.  It's awfully hot, Michael!"  Millicent
referred to the sand.  She withdrew her arm.  "Give me your hand--just
feel it."  She pulled up his sleeve and took his hand.  She held it in
her own and thrust it into the hot, soft sand.  With her free hand she
pulled up her own sleeve and Michael's so as to allow their arms to
sink still further into the sand; they were bare to the elbow.  Her
wrist and the palm of her hand were pressed close to Michael's.
Suddenly her hand ceased boring; she remained still, her soft fingers
embracing Michael's.  Her eyes sought his.  He read their invitation.

"It's only our hands, Michael--let them rest."  Her fingers tightened
round his as she spoke; her eyes challenged him.  At the challenge his
pulses leapt, his hand ceased to resist.  For two days he had been
playing with fire.  In the wilderness that surrounded them what waters
would quench its leaping flames?

Millicent's soft arm lay with his; it was human and caressing.  Then a
fear came to him, born of a sudden intense hatred.  She was such a
little thing.  He could strangle her, crush her to atoms.  That was the
way to put an end to it all.

The next moment Millicent was alarmed, terribly frightened.  She was in
Michael's arms.  He was crushing her, crushing her to atoms.  It was
not a lover's embrace; it was the mad fury of a roused mystic.  Would
he crush her until he killed her?

"Don't, Mike, you'll choke me!  You are choking me now.  Do you want to
kill me?"

"I could," he said.  "And I'd like to!"  He flung her from him on the
soft sand.  "Go away," he said.  "Leave me and my camp for good and
all!"  His words were broken, mere breathless ejaculations.  His eyes
made a coward of the reckless woman, but she collected her quick wits.

She lay where he had flung her.  She was not hurt or even stunned, but
she knew that if she lay there in the position in which he had flung
her, presently he would come to her and ask her if he had been too
brutal.  She traded on his tenderness to women, his horror of
inflicting pain.

She lay motionless, the blue sky above her, the yellow sands stretching
to the far-off horizon.  She had tempted him willingly, deliberately.
Something had compelled her to test her power.  Her annoyance at his
apparent indifference to her presence had become too poignant to hide
any longer.  Anger was exhausting her nerves.  She was conscious that
she had burnt her boats, that her tactics were at fault.

Michael did not look at her.  He was conscious of nothing in the world
but an unbearable contempt for his own manhood.  Why had he not driven
her away long before this?  Why had he silently acquiesced to her
companionship?

Despising her as he did, why was she able to lower him in his own eyes?
Why did he tolerate her?  Why had she any qualities which appealed to
him?  Why, oh why was she just what she was?  He hated her at the
moment, but he hated himself still more.  When they got back to the
camp he would tell Hassan that their ways must lie apart.  And now, at
this very instant, he would go and tell her that she must leave; he
must have it out with her.

He went to her and stooped over her.  "Millicent," he said, "I want to
speak to you."

"Yes, Mike."

"Get up and look at me.  I want you to listen."

Still Millicent lay perfectly motionless.  "I am listening."

He knelt down beside her.  "Have I hurt you?"

A little groan was all her answer.  Michael turned her face to his.
His hands were on her shoulders.  She winced.

"Have I hurt you?  I am sorry.  I was too rough."

Millicent raised herself to her knees.  Her face was tense, agonized.
She put her hands up to her head and held it.

Michael thought he heard a sob.  Shame or pain convulsed her body; she
rocked herself backwards and forwards.

"I am sorry I was so brutal," he said.  "But you deserved it.  I had to
do it.  I always have to be unkind--you are so foolish."

Still Millicent wept.  She removed her hands and gazed at him with wet,
mournful eyes.  Michael put his arm round her and tried to raise her.

"You were very naughty--why were you so naughty?"

One of his arms was supporting her as she struggled to her feet.  The
next instant Millicent swung herself nimbly round and flung herself on
his breast.  He was helpless.  Her hands were clasped behind his head.

"You wanted to kill me, Mike."  Her fingers slipped round his throat.
"And now I should like to kill you, yes, kill you!  Strangle you and
leave your austere, ascetic body for the vultures to enjoy!"

Mike tried to shake her off, to unclasp her hands.  She was as strong
as a young leopard.

"I would," she said.  "For I hate you and despise you!

"Then leave me," he said.  "I wish to God you would!"

"Ah, but I won't!"  The cry came from Millicent savagely.  "I won't
leave you, not until my will has subjected yours!  Before I leave your
camp you will have been my lover--mystic, aesthetic, dreamer, drifter!"

"Never!" Michael said.  "Never, never that!"

Still Millicent clung to him.  Her angry words blew her hot breath over
his cheeks.

"You are not altogether the ascetic or the saint you appear to be.  You
have scorned my love.  I will break your will.  I will humble you in
your own fine estimation of yourself.  When I take it into my head to
do a thing, I generally accomplish it."

Michael disengaged her hands with a tremendous wrench.  If he hurt her
thumbs he could not help it.  He held her from him at arm's length and
shook her, shook her as though she was a naughty child in a paroxysm of
passion which had to be subdued by extreme severity.

"You little devil!" he said.  "You'll leave my camp at once, this very
day!  I've had more than enough of you!"

Millicent's eyes, as unflinching as Michael's, laughed triumphantly.

"What about my food and medicine for your sick man, your valuable guide
to the hidden treasure?  You can't afford to let him slip through your
hands!"

Michael's eyes dropped.  He had allowed Millicent to remain
unquestioned, even willingly, as a member of his expedition, since the
sick man was in need of the delicate food and medicine her equipment
contained.

As his eyes dropped, he asked her what she knew about the hidden
treasure.  He had only told her about the tomb of Akhnaton; he had
particularly refrained from mentioning the Pharaoh's hidden store.

"How did I get to know all I wanted to know?"  She glanced at him
tauntingly.  "It wasn't quite all my love for you, dear man!  Perhaps
I, too, wished to pick up some of the jewels in King Solomon's Mines!"

"I never mentioned them to you--what do you know about them?"

"What about the precious jewel in the saint's ear--the oriental
amethyst, the ninth jewel in the high priest's breast-plate, as
mentioned in Exodus, 'and the third row a ligure, an agate, and an
amethyst'?"  Millicent trilled off the text laughingly.

"You have stooped to spying," he said.  "You have an eavesdropper in
your camp?"

"'Verily those who do deeds of real goodness shall drink of a cup
tempered with camphor'!  Well, is it tempered enough, Michael?"  She
laughed mockingly, derisively.  "Was the deed pure goodness?  Was this
fanatic not the 'favoured of God' who was to lead you to Akhnaton's
treasure?"

"Go!" he cried.  "I have heard enough!"

"And take all my provisions and medicines with me!"

"We must do the best we can for him without your luxuries, if you have
no mercy, no heart for the suffering."

"And how are you going to get rid of me?"

"You are going.  I don't know how, but you're going."

"What if I refuse to go?"

"You won't."

Millicent laughed.

"You won't," he repeated.  "You must go.  You can't stay."

"And why?"

"Because. . . ."  Michael hesitated.  "Because . . . you know . . . you
know why . . . you know, what you have just said."

"Because you are afraid you will end by being my lover?"

"No.  Because I wish to be free of spies and hindrances."

"Then I do hinder?  You know my spying has not hurt you!"  Her eyes
glowed.

Michael gazed sternly into them.  He never lied.  With him the truth
was instinctive, masterful; it was the keynote of his religion.  "Yes,"
he said.  "You are a spiritual hindrance.  I am a human man--you are a
sensual woman.  You have determined to do everything in your power to
keep me ever mindful of the fact.  Because I love Margaret Lampton and
I do not love you, you have determined to make me unworthy of her, you
have trapped me and tricked me and followed me into the wilderness."

"You must admit I managed that part of the job very neatly."
Millicent's words were brave, but a little fear had crept into her
heart.  Michael was in no mood for trifling.  Her game was lost.

"How did you do it?" he said.  His hands tightened; they held her
shoulders.  The gentle aesthete was a furious Celt.  He wished that it
was a man with whom he was dealing.

Still Millicent was brave, her voice scornful.  "_Baksheesh_--the
moving finger in the East."

"You contemptible creature!" he said.  "Who did you pay?"

"That would be telling."

"I know it would," he said.  "And you are going to tell me."  He held
her with painful firmness.

Millicent's courage gave way.  Michael's eyes alarmed her.  Something
in them warned her that, once roused, he was a dangerous man to trifle
with.  There is not an immeasurable distance between the mystic and the
madman.  The pressure of his fingers on her shoulders warned her of his
strength; his thumb was like a turnscrew.

"Who did you pay?" he asked.  "Tell me, or you will regret it."  His
grasp became an agony.

"Mohammed Ali," Millicent murmured.  "He showed me Margaret's diary."

Michael groaned.  "You little beast!" he cried.  "You mean little
beast!"

Millicent burst into a flood of weeping.  She knew that it was her only
chance, a woman's deadliest weapon with such a man.  "I loved you so!
Oh, Mike, I loved you so!  Can't you understand?  Is there no humanity
in you?  Is your nature so devoid of passion, of human love, that you
can't understand the mad heights and the depths it can lead you to?  I
have never been given the chance of rising to the heights."

Mike heard her sobs.  He saw her beautiful body convulsed with anguish.
The real woman was there at his feet, a weak creature, whose love for
himself had driven her to do these deeds he despised.  He felt that he
was in a manner to blame; for him she had sunk to this degradation.

"I am so ashamed, Mike, but for days my shame has been drowned in
anger.  I followed you and trapped you and spied upon you."  She looked
up pleadingly.  "And I'd do it all over again, even worse, Mike, I know
I would, even though I am despicable in my own eyes."

"Don't!" he said.  "It has become a madness with you, an obsession."

"Love is a madness," she said.  "It is an obsession.  It is devouring
me.  No one can judge of its power until they have felt it."

He sat down beside her.  "Millicent," he said gently, "have you ever
thought of praying, of asking for help?"  He paused.  "You poor, poor
soul, have you ever in your life tried to reach your higher self, to
get away from all this?"

"No, never."  The words came frankly.  "First let me enjoy this human
love, Michael."  Her eyes pleaded.  "Then I may try to be as you are,
but not till then."

"It would be no enjoyment," he said.  "Only a hideous mockery, a wilful
lowering of your better self."

"Not of my better self, Mike--not really.  I might rise to higher
things afterwards, with that one beautiful memory to help me, an Eden
in the desert."  Her voice was humble; her eyes swam with tears--a
beautiful Magdalen.

"Poor little soul!" he said.  "Poor little Millicent!"

"Yes, Mike, poor little soul, poor lonely soul!"

"I wish I could do something to help you, show you that there is a
higher, stronger support than any poor love of mine."

"But I don't want it--at least, not now.  It doesn't appeal to me.  I
don't want it, for if I tried to be better, I'd have to try to kill my
desire for you, and even if it gives me no happiness, I'd rather have
it than kill it.  I couldn't relinquish it.  It would be giving up the
only thing I have of you--my poor, unwanted wanting of you."

"What can I say?  What can I do?"  Michael was in despair.  "How can I
help you?"

This humble, tearful Millicent made him wretched.  He felt guilty and
unkind.  He was the innocent cause of her unhappiness.  It was not
possible to be human and remain untouched by her passion for himself.
Yet he knew that he must not allow her to know that, or how his heart
ached for her.  Her spiritual loneliness horrified him.  She had
absolutely nothing to turn to, nothing to rely upon.  Her religious
observances were mere conventional occupations.  And yet mixed up in
the woman there was a mental quality very rare and sympathetic, a
strange fitful brilliance, extremely pleasing.  Once or twice on their
journey she had expressed the peculiar quality of the scenery in words
which were not far off prose poems.  It had puzzled him to know how her
intellectual refinement could dwell in the same temple as her low
characteristics.

"I don't know, Mike."  Her voice was very gentle.  "I don't see how you
can help me."

"I can pray," he said.  "I will pray.  Perhaps that is where I have
been to blame.  I have left you out of my prayers."

Millicent looked at him.  Her eyes questioned.

"I have thought only of myself, my own safety, the keeping of my
thoughts pure and true to Meg, my fight for self-control."

"Oh, Mike!"  Millicent's voice was crushed, envious.

"I should have tried to help you as well.  We can all help each other
by prayers and thoughts and beliefs, belief in the kingdom of God which
is in us.  I behaved as if you were not divine, Millicent."

"I'm not.  How can I be divine?  I am absolutely worldly--I've no wish
for your divine love!"

"Divinity is in you," he said.  "It is yours, you cannot get away from
it."  He paused.  "You were ashamed just now--that was the light which
cannot be put out.  Now, every day, I will try to be less selfish, I
will pray for you.  Prayer will help to bring you into the light.  Soon
you will begin to peep into the kingdom of God which is in you.  You
will see how wonderful it is.  Love will hold out its arms to you from
every passing cloud, from every comer of the wilderness.  I am to
blame, for I only tried to banish you, instead of helping you.  I must
begin to-day.  We must all help each other by our thoughts as well as
by our actions.  Do you understand?  I, who ought to have known better,
have failed."

Millicent took his hand and raised it to her lips.  "Why should God
have so blessed Margaret Lampton?" she said.  "She is your 'guarded
lady,' as Hassan would say."

"When you know her better, you will see that it is not Meg, but I, who
have been blessed, I who have reason to be thankful.  Margaret's
thoughts constantly reach me; they have helped me over and over again."

"Will you forgive me, Mike?"

"Of course I will," he said.  "Else how could I help you?"

"It's your very goodness I love, Michael.  I realize that.  And yet how
horribly I have tried to spoil it!"

"We are going to start afresh, we understand each other."  He looked at
her with sincere eyes.  "Isn't that so?  Do you want me for your
friend, Millicent?"

"More than anything in the world . . . except . . ." she paused.
". . . except . . ."

His eyes held hers; they became stern.  "We have settled all that.  You
know now that it can never be, and if I am to be your friend, you must
forget all that you have ever said."

"Yes, yes--the crumbs, Mike, they are sweeter than nothing."

"My help," he said, "and sympathy--that is what I can give you."

"And may I remain in your camp for a little time?"

"No."  His voice was firm.  "We must part.  But that will make no
difference.  I will help you, I promise.  I can help you as Margaret
helps me."

Millicent made no demur.  It was useless.  "Will the saint be well
enough to travel to-morrow, do you think?"

"I don't know.  His headache was better this morning.  If he can retain
some food, he may soon pick up."

"And you will go on to Akhnaton's tomb?"  Millicent did not refer to
the buried treasure.

"Whenever he is better."  Michael looked at his watch.  "We had better
be going back," he said.  "I want to make preparations."

"And I am to return to civilization!"

Michael did not answer.  He called Hassan.  "We are ready, Hassan," he
said.

In a short time they were off.

Before mounting her camel Millicent said: "Thank you, Michael.  I don't
deserve your kindness."

On their homeward journey Michael's heart held many a prayer.  He was
no longer merely to turn this woman out of his thoughts, to thrust her
behind him, a thing of Satan.  He was to help her.  He was to help her
until such a time as she could help herself.  He was to bring her mind
to the consciousness of the truth.  He was to reveal to her, by his
prayers, what Akhnaton taught his people--that God is happiness, God is
beauty, God is Love.




CHAPTER VI

It was close upon sundown when Michael and Millicent got back to the
camp.  Abdul had come a little way to meet them.  To an observant eye,
the calm of his Eastern countenance showed some anxiety.  Millicent did
not see it.  Michael was riding on ahead when Abdul met him.  Abdul
turned his mule and rode by his master's side.

"You have something to tell me, Abdul?"

"_Aiwah_, Effendi, I have something to tell you."

They increased the space between themselves and the camels which were
following them in Indian file.  Abdul spoke in Arabic, as he always did
to his master.  When he had confided his secret to Michael he lapsed
into silence.  The Effendi looked very grave.  The news was far from
pleasant.

"You need not tell Madam," Michael said.  "Not until you are quite
sure, Abdul.  It will only alarm her."

"_Aiwah_, Effendi, I gave it to your ears alone."

"How is he?"  Michael referred to the saint.

"His temperature has fallen--head no longer aches.  That is always the
case."

"You have done all that is necessary?"

"All I could do, Effendi.  Madam has good medicines, praise be to
Allah!  We can be hopeful."

They rode on to the camp in silence.  Michael's thoughts were busy.
What would Millicent say?  Would she be afraid?  The idea was not
pleasant.

When they had dismounted Michael went at once to see the saint and
Millicent hurried off to her tent to change her dusty garments for
daintier ones.  She was still penitent and half-ashamed.  Who knows but
that Michael's efforts to help her were already beginning to bear
fruit?  If thoughts can purify, Millicent's heart should have been as
fair as a white lotus flower whose roots are in the mud.  Michael's
thoughts had baptized it.

When she had tidied up and was beautifully fresh in her snow-white
muslin frock, she went outside and waited for the dinner-gong to sound.
Even that item of civilization had not been forgotten--it is true it
was only a drum, an earthen _darabukkeh_, but it filled its purpose
well.  Its dull thud, thud, had scarcely ceased vibrating the air when
Michael appeared.  As he came towards her, Millicent went to meet him.
He had not yet changed his day clothes.

"Don't come near me!" he called out.  "Not any further."

"Why not?" Millicent said.  "What's the matter?  Are you stricken with
the plague?"  She spoke laughingly.

Michael stopped within a few feet of her.  "Perhaps I am stricken with
the smallpox," he said.  "The saint has got it--it may be of a very
malignant order.  We don't know."

Every vestige of colour left Millicent's face.  She felt sick.  "And
you have been to him?  You touched him!"

"Of course.  I wished to judge for myself.  There is no doubt about it."

"M-i-c-h-a-e-l!"  The word was a long-drawn-out expression of horror.
A wave of inexpressible terror and disgust overwhelmed Millicent; she
could scarcely speak or move.  "You knew, and yet you went to him.  How
could you, oh, how could you?"

He scarcely heard her.  "These natives who have never been vaccinated
take it very badly.  Smallpox is a scourge with all Africans, from the
north to the south."

Millicent's mind was now working furiously.  She did not wish to let
Michael see how terrified she was, or how angry.

"Go and change," she said.  "Go at once.  Get Abdul to disinfect you--I
brought any amount of stuffs."

"Oh, I'm all right--I'm not afraid.  I was with him for a long time
last night.  If I'm going to take it, the mischief's done."

Millicent's quick mind travelled.  Michael had been with this sick
saint the night before.  He, Michael, might be a carrier of the
disease, even if he were immune from it himself.  And she had been fool
enough to throw herself into his arms!  Oh, what a fool!  She might
even now be incubating the horrible, loathsome disease.  She was
soul-sick.  Her fear and rage were inseparable.  But she must, of
course, make a good show.

"Never mind, Mike, about last night.  Probably the disease was not at
such an infectious stage as it is now--you may not have contracted it.
Take what precautions you can--go quickly and disinfect yourself.  Are
you really sure it's smallpox?"  She said the last words with a
shudder.  "Ugh! it's horrible!"

"Yes," Michael said.  "The spots have appeared on his wrists and at the
back of his neck.  Abdul knows the beastly disease only too well--the
vomiting and the headaches and the fall in the temperature.  It appears
that he told Abdul that he had been very, very sick for some days
before we met him.  But malaria might have accounted for the
sickness--and the headaches.  No one could have diagnosed it until the
spots appeared.  Abdul's not to blame."

"What are you going to do?" Millicent said.  "Stick to him?  I suppose
you will!" she shivered.

"I will isolate his tent.  I can't go on and leave him here, if you
mean that."

"Oh, you're crazy!  Think of Margaret, if you won't think of yourself!"

"She wouldn't have me do it."

"Leave one or two of the men behind with him.  It's absurd, running
such a risk.  He will probably die, in any case."

"When I needed his help I meant to stick to him.  When he now needs
mine, am I to desert him?  You said my goodness was not disinterested.
It was not, but I can't stoop to that."

"If these Moslems really think he's a saint, they'll nurse him
faithfully.  I'll pay them what they ask--anything."

"Money isn't everything, Millicent--surely you know that?"

"It can do a great deal.  If you hadn't met him, he'd have died."

"But I have met him.  Doesn't that show that I am entrusted with his
welfare?"

"A chance meeting."

"That absurd word!  By chance you mean such a big thing that your mind
can't imagine it!  You choose to call a link in the Divine Chain
chance! the Chance which gives life, the Master of that which is
ordained, you mean!"

"You can't nurse him, you can't do anything more for him than see that
he has all that he wants.  'The faithful' will carry out your
instructions.  Do be practical, reasonable."

"It's no use, Millicent, I can't leave him.  I won't."  Michael
shivered.  "It's chilly.  Let's go and eat our dinner."

"You must change first--I insist.  It's only right to others."

"Then don't wait for me."

"Oh yes, I will.  Only be quick."  Millicent knew that she was too sick
with fear to eat and enjoy the excellent dinner which had been prepared
for them.  As she waited for Michael, she cursed her own folly, her own
abominable bad luck.  If Michael was a carrier, she had no chance,
unless she was one of those rare people who are immune from the
disease.  She did not think she was, because when she was last
vaccinated, when she was fifteen, she had been very, very ill and sick.
She felt physically tired, for her brain was quick.  It was imagining
horrible things.  She was visualizing her own beauty spoilt, her fair
skin deeply pitted with pock-marks, her colour all gone.  The disease
would take the glitter from her hair, the glow from her personality.
She knew the result of smallpox.  She saw herself, a little,
washed-out, yellow-skinned woman, with weak eyes and drab-coloured hair.

Oh, why had she ever called Michael's attention to the saint?  If he
had not gone to his rescue, he would have died where he fell, bathed in
the blood-red light of the afterglow.  Why had Michael been such a fool
as to touch him and nurse him?  Had she not warned him that the fanatic
was filthy and probably infectious?  And, to make matters still worse,
to leave no room for chance, she had of her own will flung herself into
Michael's arms!  Her determination to subject his will to hers, to
triumph over Margaret, had brought her to this!  Michael was further
from her than ever.  She had disgusted him; his only thought for her
now was his desire to make her as religious as himself.  She had to
admit her defeat.

And this was how it had ended!  Michael, the mystic, the quixotic
idiot, had taken into his camp a creature sick with smallpox, and she,
Millicent, had probably contracted it by her act of rashness!  The
desert seemed scarcely large enough to hold her anger.  It stifled and
exhausted her.

During dinner very little was spoken between the two, for Millicent was
devastated by her own terrors and Michael was making plans for the sick
man's isolation.  His tent must remain where it was, while Michael's
own, and all the servants', except those inhabited by the men who
wished to nurse the saint, must be moved to a safe distance.
Millicent's going was driven from his mind.

Millicent was thankful that Michael did not notice how little she ate
at dinner.  The servant did; nothing passes a native's eye.  He knew
the woman's terror.

Soon after their coffee was served they separated, Millicent going to
her own tent and Michael to consult with Abdul.  When Millicent reached
her tent and had managed to compose her mind, she sent for Hassan.
Half an hour later he left her.  He had much to do.  The _Sitt's_
orders were comprehensive.

      *      *      *      *      *      *

Michael went early to bed.  He was very tired.  At about two o'clock in
the morning he stirred in his sleep.  Was he hearing the distant sound
of camels roaring, or was he dreaming?  He was too lazy to find out.
If there were jackals prowling about, the night-guards would see to
them.  Undoubtedly something had disturbed him, for as a rule he slept
without moving the long night through.

Conscious of feeling deliciously sleepy and totally indifferent to
anything but his own comfort, he soon fell asleep again.  In his dreams
he heard again the liquid sound of bells--mule bells and camel
bells--growing fainter and fainter as the animals travelled into the
distance.

      *      *      *      *      *      *

In the morning, when he awoke, it was with a new lightness of spirit
and refreshed vitality.  A sense of freedom exalted him, a subconscious
freedom, which had been absent for some days.  The glory of the desert
called to him.  He felt spiritually and physically vitalized.

Even the recollection of the nature of the saint's illness did not damp
his spirits.  He would recover with careful nursing, and when he was
better they would go on their way rejoicing.  The Promised Land seemed
nearer.

It was scarcely time for his early cup of tea, yet he saw Abdul
bringing it.  Perhaps the joy of life had waked him, too, perhaps he
also was eager to get up and greet the morn.  What a wonderful morning
it was!  All pure, cool, clear sunlight.  Michael's heart, a throbbing
organ of praise, sent forth a paean to the pagan skies.

"Is the Effendi awake?  May his servant enter?"

"Yes, Abdul, come in."

Abdul entered with the noiseless movements of his race.  As he stood by
his master's bed, Michael saw that the unemotional native was
attempting to hide his anger.  Something had greatly upset him.

"What is it, Abdul?  Has anyone been unkind to the saint?"

"_Aiwah_, Effendi, it is not that."  Abdul spoke lengthily and in the
correct Arabic fashion.  He must not approach the subject too quickly.

"Tell me," Michael said.  "What troubles you, Abdul?"

"_Aiwah_, Effendi, the honourable _Sitt_ has left you.  She has
gone--there is no trace of her camp."

"What?"  Michael jumped out of bed.  "The _Sitt_ has gone?  No sign of
her camp?"

"_Aiwah_, Effendi, that is so.  Your servant offers his apologies for
bringing you bad news."

To Abdul's eternal amazement, Michael burst into a roar of laughter,
hearty, unsuppressed enjoyment of a good joke.

"Gone?" he repeated.  "The _Sitt_ has gone, made a moonlight flitting?
The little devil!"

Abdul's mystification was so complete that he could only salaam.

"The little coward!" Michael said.  "The miserable little coward!"

He spoke so rapidly, and in English, that Abdul could not fully
understand.  Indeed, he was totally at a loss to comprehend anything of
the situation.  It baffled him.  His master actually seemed pleased and
highly amused at the cowardly conduct of his mistress!

"When did the _Sitt_ leave the camp, Abdul?"

"At about two o'clock this morning, Effendi.  She has taken everything
with her," he threw up his hands.  "Her medicines, her delicate food,
everything we need for the saint."

"Curse her!" Michael said.  "What a dirty trick!"

"The _Sitt_ was very much afraid, Effendi."

"Well, perhaps that was quite natural, Abdul.  But to take everything
away!  What shall we do without her tins of milk, her medicine-chest?"

"_Insha Allah_, we will save the 'favoured of God,' Effendi.  There in
the Bedouin camp they will give us milk--they have goats."

"How is he this morning?"

"The Answerer of Prayer has heard the cry of His children.  He has
again bestowed upon us His everlasting mercy, His compassion is
infinite."

"The saint is better?"

"The malady is running its course.  _Insha Allah_, it will do so
without any complications.  The pox now appears on his back and body.
The condition of the saint's general health is not such as to cause any
undue anxiety to the Effendi."

"Is he conscious?"

"His thoughts are in heaven, but his mind is clearer, praise be to
Allah."

"And the _Sitt_?" Michael said.  "How did she get away?"

"She gave minute instructions to Hassan early in the evening."  Abdul
salaamed.  "_Aiwah_, honourable Effendi, you will be relieved of a
double anxiety--the _Sitt_ was greatly afraid."

"Yes, Abdul, I'm thankful, very thankful."  Michael stretched out his
arms and breathed a deep breath of freedom.  Thank God she had gone,
gone of her own free will!  This, then, was the meaning of his sense of
liberation.  The white tent was there no longer.  It had vanished.

Then he remembered having stirred in his sleep.  The bells he had heard
were the bells on the animals which were carrying the frightened
Millicent.  Her _hijrah_ had not been achieved without affecting his
subconscious mind.

Meanwhile, Abdul was studying his master's mind.  He was reading his
thoughts as one reads a story from the illustrations of a book.  He saw
relief and freedom--and, above all, thankfulness.  His master's
besetting sin was his dislike of scenes, his hypersensitiveness in the
matter of causing pain to others, the desire to surround himself with
happiness.

"_Gehenna_ to the harlot!" he said to himself.  "_Insha Allah_, she
will regret last night's work, even though it may benefit the Effendi!"

"You will be lonely, Effendi," he said.  "But without the honourable
_Sitt_ your work will progress.  Women are a hindrance to men's minds,
an anxiety."

"I am well pleased, Abdul.  We were not lonely before Madam came."

"_Aiwah_, Effendi, there was the prospect of the meeting with the
honourable _Sitt_.  Now there is desolation."

"I did not seek the meeting, Abdul.  All is well."

"_Insha Allah_, things will progress more favourably."

Abdul left his master.  He had learned all that he wanted to know.  The
Effendi did not love the harlot.  He knew now that the woman had
followed Michael, and that she had got wind of the hidden treasure.

When he was alone, he gazed at the shrunken encampment.  The white tent
was there no longer; the place was rid of the woman and her luxuries.
Had she decamped with two ends in view--to get away from the infected
spot and to anticipate the Effendi in his search?

"_Gehenna!_" he said again.  "I did not tell the honourable Effendi
that the linen sheets in which the saint slept last night belonged to
the _Sitt_--that they are packed with her clothes which she will wear
again!  She has made her own bed--let her sleep in it.  Hassan will see
to that."

The distance of the flat desert had obliterated Millicent's cavalcade.
Was it journeying towards civilization, hurrying from the plague-spot
in the desert, or was it going to the hills behind Akhnaton's city?

When Michael had hurried to the saint the night before and had shown
himself totally fearless and unmindful of his own welfare, the saint
had implored him to leave him.  He knew the danger and the awfulness of
smallpox; he knew the risk the Englishman was running.

When Michael made him understand that he had no intention of leaving
him, that he was going to wait for him until he was better, the sick
man was overwhelmed with gratitude.  He told Michael that he would show
him, if Allah permitted, the place in the hills where the hidden
treasure lay.  But in case it should please the Giver of Death to allow
His servant to look upon the beauty of His face (which was the sick
man's way of saying in case he should die), he would beg of the Effendi
to listen to what he had to tell him.

"While my memory is clear, while the All-Merciful permits me to speak
to the Effendi, I will instruct him, the treasure shall be his."

Had the saint's instructions been passed on to Millicent's ears?  Were
her fast-moving camels bearing her to the crocks of fine gold and the
wealth of jewels which the hermit of el-Azhar had visualized?

The fate of every man hangs round his neck.  If Allah had willed it?




CHAPTER VII

The saint was dead.  At dawn his soul had passed into _Barzakh_, or the
second world, the intermediate state between the present life and the
resurrection.

While administering to him, Abdul's anxious ears heard the ominous
rattle in the dying man's throat, he turned his face Mecca-wards and
reverently closed his eyes.  At the same moment the faithful who had
gathered round him--among whom were some of the inhabitants of the
Bedouin village, for the presence of the hermit-saint in the
foreigner's camp was known--in one voice acclaimed ecstatically:

"Allah!  Allah!  There is no strength nor power but in God.  To God we
belong, to Him we must return!  God have mercy on him.  _La ilaha
illallah_."

His death had taken place one hour before sunrise; it was now one hour
before sunset and Michael was sitting on a little knoll in the desert,
watching the mourners return from the funeral of the holy man.  It was
a very simple affair, far different from the splendid ceremony which
would have been accorded him if he had died near a city or of a less
contagious malady.  There were no hired mourners, no fine trappings on
the bier, no wild women whose quavering "joy-cries" (_zaghareet_) rent
the air with their shrill voices.

The little procession which followed the emaciated corpse to its last
resting-place in God's wide acre of sand and sky was composed of
sincere mourners.  The corpse had been wrapped in white muslin and
enclosed in a white linen bag.  When devout pilgrims or pious Moslems
go on a lengthy journey, they usually carry their grave-cloths with
them.  The saint had not provided himself with even his shroud.  As a
favoured of God, the clothes in which he would be buried would be
forthcoming; he took no thought for the morrow.  All his life, by
Allah's guidance, men had provided for his simple wants.  A
hermit-saint is never without his devotees.  As a _welee_ he was worthy
of a costly funeral, but the nature of his death demanded immediate
burial.  His fame would follow after.  Michael knew that probably some
day a white tomb, like a miniature mosque, would mark the spot where
his bones had been laid to rest.  And to that tomb, a conspicuous
object in the flat desert, with its white dome silhouetted against the
deep blue sky, devout pilgrims would travel, for many generations.

Michael had not attended the funeral.  He had consulted Abdul and they
had come to the conclusion that it would be wiser for him, as a
professing Christian, not to be present at the actual religious
ceremony.  From a raised spot in the desert he had seen all that had
taken place.  In accordance with Moslem superstition, the funeral had
been before sunset.  All Moslems dislike a dead body remaining in the
house overnight; it is always, when circumstances permit, buried in the
evening of the day on which death has taken place.

Abdul had told Michael that the dead man would, in all probability,
guide the bearers to the exact spot where they were to bury him; if
they were going in the wrong direction he would impel them to stop.
Michael had watched with interest to see if this would take place, if
the bearers halted or altered their course.  Evidently the saint was
pleased with the spot they had selected, for they journeyed on
unhaltingly until they were lost to sight.

And now the little procession was returning, in the fading sunlight.
The holy man's emaciated frame, enclosed in its white bag, lay under
the golden sand of the eastern desert.

This desert burial seemed to Michael a very simple and beautiful method
of disposing of the dead.  The dull chanting of the mourners had lent
an emotional note to the scene.  It was a sad little incident, but one
totally free from the ordinary melancholy which attends a Western
burial.  For a Moslem, death has little horror.  A pilgrim in the
desert, when he knows that his death is approaching, either from
fatigue or exhaustion or some disease, will dig his own grave and lay
himself down in it, covering his body up to his neck with sand.  There
he will quietly, with Eastern philosophy, await his end.  He knows that
the four winds will bring drifting sand to the spot where his body
lies; it will gather and gather, as it does against any excrescence,
until his body is well covered.  In the desert many are the ships that
pass in the night.

The saint had been in Michael's camp for a fortnight and during that
time no other member of the party had developed smallpox.  Michael was
in blissful ignorance of the fact that the servant whom he had sent
back to Freddy Lampton's hut in the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings,
bearing a letter to Margaret, in which he had told her everything that
had happened--not omitting Millicent's visit and her sudden
departure--had never even reached Luxor.  He had fallen sick by the way
and had died of smallpox in a desert village.  He alone of the whole
party had contracted the disease.  The letter which he carried was
burned by the _sheikh_ of the village, a wise and cautious man, who had
been called in to give his advice as to the treatment of the infectious
traveller.  A _sheikh's_ duties are many and varied; he is indeed the
father of his village.  The traveller had, of course, gone to the
hostel or rest-house for travellers in the village, where he was
entitled to one night's rest and food.

It was during the long, anxious days when the saint hovered between
life and death that the true hospitality of the Bedouin camp was put to
the test.  And it was not wanting; whatever was theirs to give they
gave with a beautiful hospitality.  It was to them a pleasure and
satisfaction; Allah be praised that they were able to render any
service to the holy man and to help the stranger who had shown him so
great an act of charity.  Eggs and milk and the flesh of young kids
they had in abundance, and these offerings they sent to the camp in
such quantities that Michael felt embarrassed and overwhelmed.  Michael
knew that they are not a devout people, but in this instance their
instinctive hospitality, stimulated by their superstitions, served in
place of blind obedience to the teachings of the Koran, in which the
rules set forth on the subject of charity are splendid and far-reaching.

The little figure with the silver disc and the protruding "tummy" had
become quite a familiar sight in his camp; it came and went with the
nervous agility of an antelope.

On this evening, as Michael watched the party of mourners drawing
nearer and nearer to the camp, he tried to understand their thoughts.
He knew that each one of them believed exactly the same thing; their
spiritual ideas never strayed one letter from the Koran; their minds
had never thought for themselves--it would have been rank heresy so to
do.  They were as certain now as though they had seen it there that the
saint's soul was in Barzakh.  It had left this, the first world, the
world of earning and of the "first creation," the world where man earns
his reward for the good or bad deeds which he has done.  In Barzakh the
saint would have a bright and luminous body, for such is the reward of
the pious.

Was not this in keeping with the luminous appearance of Meg's vision?
Abdul had often told Michael that he himself had seen in this, the
"first world," the spirits of both evil and right doers, and that the
spirits of the evildoers were black and smoky, whereas the spirits of
the pious were luminous as a full moon.

Michael envied the completeness of their belief, even while he pitied
them.  They had evolved nothing for themselves; their salvation was
merely a matter of obeying the teachings of the Koran unquestioningly.
Obedience and surrender were their watchwords.  How much better were
Akhnaton's "Love and the Companionship of God"!  To walk and talk with
God, how much more enjoyable, how much more edifying to man's higher
self, than the mere obeying of His laws!  Even though they prayed,
these simple Moslems, five times a day, they never recognized God's
voice in the song of the birds: they did not know that it was He Who
was singing--the birds were His mediums.  In the winds of the desert,
heaven's wireless messengers, they caught no messages.  What the Koran
did not specify did not enter into their religion or spiritual
understanding.

Abdul approached his master.  The saint was buried and the procession
of the faithful had gone to perform their various tasks; it was now
time to return to practical matters.  Michael was amazed at his
cheerful expression.  Abdul asked his master if it would suit him to
continue their journey the next day.  Would he give instructions?

Michael assented.  A little of his ardour had vanished.  "Yes, Abdul,"
he said.  "I suppose we must be going on our way.  It is sad to leave
this camp, where we have witnessed such a wonderful example of humility
and singleness of purpose.  Don't you shrink from leaving him to such
utter desolation?"

"_Aiwah_, Effendi, but you know there is joy for us all, not sadness.
The beloved ones of God do not die with their physical death, for they
have their means of sustenance with them."

"In the second world, Abdul, is your saint already tasting the joys of
paradise?"

"_Aiwah_, Effendi.  Punishments and rewards are bestowed immediately
after death, and those whose proper place is hell are brought to hell,
while those who deserve paradise are brought to paradise."

"Then in the third world, what greater rewards are there than the
pleasures of paradise?  Surely that is infinite happiness?"

"The manifestation of the highest glory of God--that is the supreme
reward, Effendi, the meeting of God face to face."

"Then in paradise, in the second world, the saint will not yet see God?"

"_La_, Effendi.  The day of resurrection is the day of the complete
manifestation of God's glory, when everyone shall become perfectly
aware of the existence of God.  On that day every person shall have a
complete and open reward for his actions.  He shall actually see God."

Michael's thoughts flew to the vision of Akhnaton.  If the luminous
state was significant of Barzakh, or the second world, perhaps it was
only during that period that the spirits were able to return to earth.
He was never forgetful of the fact that in Eternity time cannot be
measured, yet three thousand years spent in the second world seemed to
his human mind a long time of waiting!

They were walking together towards the camp.

"_Aiwah_, Effendi," Abdul said, "to-morrow we depart at dawn?--the
weather grows hotter."

"Yes, Abdul, at dawn.  I will be ready--never fear."

"Has the Effendi ever allowed himself to think that the honourable
_Sitt_ who left him two weeks ago may have journeyed to the hidden
treasure?"

Michael stared.  "No, Abdul, no, I have never thought of such a thing."

"The Effendi has a beautiful mind.  The beloved saint, whom Allah has
seen fit to remove from our sight, had a heart no more free from evil."

"But, Abdul. . . ."  Michael stopped.  His mind was suddenly filled
with new thoughts.  Abdul's suggestion had opened up a deep chasm of
ugly suspicions; his whole being seemed to have fallen into it.  Abdul
waited.

"Madam was terrified--she was flying from the danger of smallpox.  She
would think of nothing but of getting safely back to civilization, I
feel certain."

"_Aiwah_, Effendi, but the honourable _Sitt_ has a woman's soul, and a
woman's soul has often been sold for gold and jewels and much fine
raiment."

"That is true, Abdul."

Had not Millicent stooped to the lowest means of trapping him and of
obtaining the information she desired?  If she could do the one deed,
why not the other?

But the idea was absurd.  She was so totally ignorant of the geography
of the desert.  She had had no more idea of where she was going than a
blind kitten.  He reminded Abdul of the fact.

"_Aiwah_, Effendi, but the honourable _Sitt_ had a spy in her camp.  I
have seen him at his work."

"What could he have discovered?  You, I know, never discuss my
affairs--we have never even talked of them together."

Abdul salaamed.  "My master's secrets are his servant's."

"Then how could he find out?"

"Tents have ears, Effendi.  The saint's voice was weak, but not too
weak for the super-ears of a spy.  When the saint told the Effendi,
very secretly and minutely, how to find the hidden treasure, on that
night when he knew that Allah had decreed his death, Abdul was also
playing the part of a spy.  He saw the servant of the honourable
_Sitt_, he saw his ear, and how it was placed at a little aperture in
the sick man's tent."

Michael was silent for a few seconds.

"_Ma lesh_!  The Effendi need not trouble too much.  I did not tell
him--there was nothing to be gained by causing my master unhappiness."

"I am not troubling, Abdul.  If it has been so willed that I am to
discover Akhnaton's treasure, even the spy of the cleverest woman on
earth will not prevent it.  I am fatalist enough for that, Abdul!"

"The Effendi is wise.  Avarice destroys what the avaricious gathers.
Allah will reward the spy according to his merits."

Michael smiled.  "I'm afraid it is more my nature than my piety which
makes it easy for me to resign myself to the inevitable."

"_Ma lesh_!  The Effendi understates his obedience to God's will--there
is much good in patiently tolerating what you dislike."

"There's another way of expressing the same thing, Abdul--Effendi
Lampton calls it 'drifting.'  I am too like the desert sands, he
thinks.  I am without ambition, I too easily accept what seems to me
the deciding finger of fate."

"Content is prosperity, Effendi."

"And we say that God helps those who help themselves."

"_Aiwah_."  Abdul smiled.  "Our rendering of the proverb is more
beautiful--'God helps us so long as we help each other.'  The Effendi
showed much charity--he helps others rather than himself."

"My help was unworthy of mention, the merest human sympathy for the
helpless and suffering.  Who could have done less?"

"We consider sympathy the next best thing to a proper belief in God,
sympathy for others."  Abdul bowed.  "The Effendi has much sympathy--he
himself is not aware of how much."

"Thank you, Abdul, but I do believe in God.  I believe in Him so fully
and unreservedly that I often wonder why I am not a good man.
Sometimes I am not so bad, or I think I am not, for I am very conscious
of Him, He is very near to me.  At other times the world is a
wilderness and God is very far."

"We are never far from God, Effendi.  We cannot be.  He is closer to us
than the hairs of our head, there is nothing nearer than God."

"I know that, Abdul, I know it, but yet these lapses come.  I feel
alone, abandoned, useless, my life purposeless, wasted."

"A man has no choice, Effendi, in settling the aims of his life.  He
does not enter the world or leave it as he desires.  The true aim of
his life consists in the knowing and worshipping of God and living for
His sake.  Our Holy Book says, 'Verily the religion which gives a true
knowledge of God and directs in the most excellent way of His worship
is Islam.  Islam responds to and supplies the demands of human nature,
and God has created man after the model of Islam and for Islam.  He has
willed it that man should devote his faculties to the love, obedience
and worship of God, for it is for this reason that Almighty God has
granted him faculties which are suited to Islam.'"

Michael listened with reverent attention.  He knew that Abdul was
conferring a special favour on him in that he was actually quoting the
very words of the Holy Koran to a Christian.  As a matter of fact,
Abdul had ceased to think of Michael as a Christian--from his Moslem
point of view, as an enemy of Islam.  He rather considered his
condition as that of one who was searching for the Light and would
eventually enjoy the perfection of Islam.  He knew that Michael did not
divide the honours of the one and only God; he believed, as Moslems
believe, that the Effendi Jesus was not the Son of God, but a prophet
to whom God had revealed Himself.

When they parted for the night, Abdul was again the practical servant,
the excellent dragoman.  By dawn the camp would be on its way to its
objective, the hills beyond the outline of the lost "City of the
Horizon."  Abdul, the visionary and the pious Moslem, was as keen about
reaching Akhnaton's treasure as Pizarro was obsessed with the reports
of the wealth of Peru.

For half of that short night Michael tried unsuccessfully to sleep.  He
needed rest, for it had been a trying and eventful day, beginning with
the saint's death and ending with his solemn and picturesque burial.

Sleep was indeed very far from him.  His brain was too excited; his
nerves were beginning to feel the strain of the dry desert air.  The
moment he closed his eyes he could see the emaciated frame of the dying
saint as he had last seen him, a few hours before his death.  He could
hear with extraordinary persistence the cries of "Allah!  Allah!  There
is no strength nor power but in God.  To God we belong, to Him we must
return."  The words had never left the desert stillness; the air held
them and repeated them time after time.

He could see Abdul reverently pull the eyelids over the death-glazed
eyes; he could see the weeping mourners perform the last ceremonies for
the dead saint.

Then the scene would change to the one he had watched in the
evening--the white figures, with blue scarves of mourning wound round
their heads, bearing the saint reverently across the golden sands.

How tender it had all been, how vivid the clear, open light of
uninterrupted space and cloudless sky!

And now it was all over.  He had met the holy man who was to lead him
to the secret spot where the treasure lay; he had heard from his lips
the account of how he had accidentally come across the crocks of gold,
when he had made for himself a dwelling-place in a cave in the heart of
the hills.  The crocks were full of blocks of Nubian gold; the jewels
were in caskets which had fallen to pieces, even before his eyes, when
the winds of the desert had reached them.

Was it all a wonderful dream?  Had he really in his possession the
crimson amethyst, of Oriental beauty, which the saint had carried in
his ear?  Was it locked in the belt-purse which he wore under his
clothes by day and laid under his pillow by night?  He put his hand
below his pillow and opened the purse; no doubt his fingers would feel
the jewel.  But what was there to tell him that it was really there,
that he was not the victim of some strange hallucination?  Thoughts
were things.  Had he thought about this treasure until it had become to
him an actual reality?

Then vision after vision was forced upon his sight--Millicent in her
varying moods, the saint's ecstasies, the now familiar figures of the
Bedouin, bearing their offerings to the sick man, their polite and
beautiful expressions as they laid the eggs and milk at his feet.  He
got so tired of the visualizing and recitation of all that he had seen
and heard during the days which he had spent in anxious uncertainty
that he could endure it no longer.

He got up and lit his candle; things would seem more real in the light.
He stretched out his hand for the book which always lay near his bed.
The Open Road, his Bible and this little volume of selected verse
constituted his desert library.  He wanted a poem which would
completely transfer his thoughts from the throbbing present, which
would change the arid desert and limitless space into green England,
with its enclosing hedges and leafy woods.  His nerves were jaded; they
needed the relaxation of moderation.  Knowing almost every poem in the
volume, he quickly found Bliss Carman's "Ode to the Daisies."  His mind
recited it even before his eyes saw the words:

  "Over the shoulders and slopes to the dune
    I saw the white daisies go down to the sea,
  A host in the sunshine, an army in June,
    The people God sends us to set our hearts free."


He read the next verse and then turned to Wordsworth's immortal lines:

  "I wandered lonely as a cloud . . ."


He read the poem through, although he knew each dear, familiar word of
it.  Reading it helped his powers of concentration.  It was amazing how
quickly the suggestion of the words soothed him.  As clearly as he had
seen all the events of the day repeating themselves, he now saw the
host of golden daffodils,

  "Beside the lake, beneath the trees."


They obliterated the desert, with its immortal voices, its passionate
appeals.  He was no longer wandering lonely as a cloud.  He was happy,
he was one with the dancing daffodils, as he watched them

  "Tossing their heads in sprightly dance."


To how many weary minds has the poem brought the same solace, the same
spiritual refreshment?

  "Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
  Fluttering and dancing in the breeze."


His fingers relaxed their hold on the book.  It dropped from his hand.
Margaret stood among the daffodils, Margaret, with her steadfast eyes
and dark-brown head, Margaret calling to him in the breeze.

      *      *      *      *      *      *

At dawn, when Abdul came to wake his master, he found the candle still
burning.  It was a little bit of wick floating in melted grease, like a
light in a saint's tomb.  The book which the Effendi had been reading
had fallen to the floor.

Abdul looked at his master anxiously.  He must have been reading very
late.  Why had he not been asleep?  He ought to have refreshed himself
for his long journey.  For many days past he had looked tired and
anxious.

Abdul folded his hands while he looked at the sleeping Michael.

"_Al hamdu lillah_ (thank God)," he said.  "The Effendi has been in
pleasant company."




CHAPTER VIII

The camp had moved on.  Two days had passed since the saint had been
laid to rest.  They were now making for a rock-village, which would
take them slightly out of their direct route, but from Abdul's account
of the place Michael thought that the delay would be well worth while.
A short extension of their journey could make but little difference to
the finding of the treasure.

The village was a subterranean one; its streets and dwelling-houses
were cut out of the desert-rock.  It had been inhabited by desert
people since immemorial times.  Obviously its origin had been for
secrecy and security.  Fugitives had probably made it and lived in it
just as the early Christians, during their period of persecution, lived
in the catacombs in Rome.

Michael had been far from well for some days past.  Abdul was anxious
about his health.  There had been no fresh cases of smallpox in the
camp and Michael's present condition indicated a touch of fever rather
than any contagious malady.  He often felt sick; he was easily tired
and his excellent powers of sleeping had deserted him.

He was troubled about Margaret.  He had neither heard from her nor was
he certain that she had received any of his letters.  During the
saint's illness he had written her two letters, which his friends at
the Bedouin camp had promised to deliver to the next desert
mail-carrier who passed their hamlet.  He had sent a runner to the
village to which he had told Margaret that she was to write.  The
runner returned, bearing no letter.