CHAPTER I

E-text prepared by Al Haines

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 _arrière 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 fête 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 _portière_ 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_.