"My name?" she cried. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that our women have married straight, clean, honourable men."

"The Lamptons again!" she said. "Am I never to be free from tradition? Just because I'm a Lampton, I am to behave in a mean, disloyal manner to the man I swore to trust? Do you suppose I'm going to? If you do, you're much mistaken. In my own heart I've been Michael's wife for weeks and weeks, so you needn't imagine I'm going to divorce him."

"But I do, Meg." Freddy rose from the table. "Now, look here," he said, "try to speak dispassionately. How can I, as your sole male guardian, countenance an engagement between you and Michael while there is only too much ground for belief that this story is true? I've not only heard it from the natives."

"You're wholly without reason. You just said you didn't believe it!" The words flashed from Meg's lips like the fire from a gun.

"I find it hard to believe. One always wants to hear two sides of a story. If Michael can swear that it is not true——"

"There is only one side to this story—that it is a lie."

"Then why has this report been spread about? There is always some fire where there is smoke, even in Egypt."

"I don't know, Freddy." Meg's voice broke; something suddenly choked her.

"The story goes that they met as if by accident in the open desert. Millicent had taken a splendid travelling equipment with her. She has made no secret of her love for Michael in the camp."

Meg was silent. A furious rage was gnawing at her bowels; it was going to her brain.

"Michael made a fine show of surprise," Freddy continued. "But it did not deceive the natives. She doesn't seem to be very popular with them."

Meg was thinking and thinking. Was this the explanation why over and over again she had had presentiments that Michael was in trouble, that he needed her? She had so often tried to reach him. Suddenly a light broke on her darkness, her whirlwind of anger abated.

"Freddy," she said, more gently. "If Millicent was in the camp, their meeting in the desert was unexpected by Michael. She trapped him, she planned it all. Don't you remember, that night when you found me on the balcony? I told you I had heard Michael calling to me. I can hear his voice now." She paused. "He woke me as surely as Mohammed Ali wakes me every morning. He wouldn't have wanted my help if he had been happy with Millicent, if he had arranged the meeting." Meg laughed, but there were tears in her voice. "That's the explanation, as clear as daylight. It's been sent to me, this light, to lighten my darkness."

"What is as clear as daylight, Meg? You put far too much faith in dreams and visions. I want to get you out of this. I wish you were more like your old practical self. What has this wonderful light made clear?"

"That Millicent tricked and trapped Michael, that she followed him."

"Do you mean that you think that she met Michael against his wish?" Freddy's soul wondered at the faith of women.

"I do. I don't think she ever mentioned her plans to him. I can see it all as clear as a pikestaff." A sudden sob broke Meg's voice. Her thankfulness at the unexpected revelation of the mystery caused it. "Of course, that's it. Millicent tempted Michael, after she had once met him. He thought he was proof against her woman's wiles, but while we're on earth we're only human, Freddy, and he was afraid of his own weakness. He called to me. We arranged to help each other—we were always to try our best to reach each other when we felt troubled. Love is not such a simple thing as it seems. I used to think that when once one was engaged to the man one loved, one would just be at anchor in a divine calm."

"You believe in dreams and all that sort of thing too much. Michael's led you off—he's to blame."

"There are some things one must believe in, Freddy. Our development is in other hands."

"What are they? Mere old wives' tales and charlatans' prophecies."

"Oh, Freddy!"

"Well, Michael's religion's got so mixed, he doesn't know what he is or what he believes in and doesn't believe in. He has a fine scorn for the old order of things. The beliefs of our forefathers have kept the Lampton men pretty straight and made splendid wives and mothers of their women, and I think that's good enough for this everyday, practical world!"

"Has it been their belief that has done it, Freddy, or their family traditions? I think we Lamptons are as true ancestor-worshippers as any Shintoists in Japan. I was never taught anything about my higher self as a child, or made to see that religion was a vital part of our existence. It was the shades of our ancestors, nothing more or less—what would Uncle John have thought, or what would Aunt Anna think? It was never what would your own soul think—was it now? It was pure Shinto. Our god-shelf bore the family-portraits."

"A jolly good worship, too. You can't do anything very far wrong if you never disgrace the honour of your ancestors. I think it's as good a principle, and far more practical and restraining than Michael's mixture of Akhnaton's Aton worship and I don't know what else. I get lost when he expounds his idea of God."

"It annoys you that his God is too big for any church. The Lamptons have always been ardent upholders of the Established Church of England."

"Let him enlarge his church, build his God a bigger one."

"That's just what he has done, that's just what he says the Protestant church has failed to do. Their church has never expanded. People's minds have grown, while the Church of England—and, in fact, all churches—have stood still."

"Michael can't do things in moderation—he's just an enthusiast about his religion, as he has been about all his phases."

"The best of all things! What were your Luthers, your Cromwells, and St. Francis?" Meg paused. Her voice fell. "And Our Lord? Weren't they enthusiasts? Did they take things moderately? Does moderation ever achieve anything? Napoleon said no country was ever conquered by half methods."

"Mike's enthusiasm is only theoretical. If he has done this thing, his new religion allows him too much latitude. He'd much better have stuck to our plain ancestor-worship."

"But he hasn't done it! You know he hasn't. Don't go over it again. That detestable woman met him and trapped him."

"And tempted him? The old, old story—the world's first romance—'the woman tempted me and I fell.'"

Meg's tears had dried very quickly. She was strong again. "I don't see how you can speak like that. You told me that Michael was straight as a die—you know you did."

"But I said he was weak—I told you that, too, didn't I?"

"If being human is weak, then I suppose he is. I never met a man who was a saint. And if believing that we are all more good than bad is weak, then I admit his lack of strength. It is his humility that makes it impossible for him to think evil of anyone. I have often proved it. Almost any man is a better man than himself in his own eyes."

"Bosh!" Freddy said. "I do wish he was more ordinary, less of a crank about these things! How can he think he isn't as good a man as that fair-tongued, lying Mohammed Ali, for instance, or any of these lying sensualists? It's the ugliest of all prides, the one that apes humility, Meg. Lots of religious enthusiasts have it."

"No, not with Michael. He thinks he is less good than they are because he is perfectly conscious of God, as he expresses it. He enjoys all the privileges of a close connection with God; he doesn't only pray to Him, as we do. He lives with him; Mike is never alone. And yet, with all that sense of God, he is full of faults and failings. These men and women, who to us appear so bad, are simply further back in their evolution. They can't be bad, if it is not their fault. They have not had the same privileges, they are only gradually evolving. Spiritually they are like the dwellers in the slums as compared with the inmates of the beautifully-appointed hygienic house in the country. Michael is in the light; these poor souls are in darkness. It is all a part of the Great Law."

Freddy had finished his tea. It had afforded him little pleasure. He must come to some definite understanding with Meg. His thoughts had been all centred on the plan of sending her home, getting her away from the atmosphere which had so strong a hold over her imagination. Perhaps if she was back in England, she might be able to put Michael and his ideas out of her thoughts. He had no wish to be disloyal to his friend, or to give him no chance to defend himself; but he had to admit that he was very thankful that it was Michael himself who had insisted that there was to be no recognized engagement between them. Had he at the time had any motive for insisting on the fact? That was an idea; it had not occurred to him before.

He turned to Meg and said abruptly. "What about going home, Meg? It's getting too hot for this sort of thing—the Valley is stifling."

"What do you mean?"

"It's too hot—the year's advancing."

Meg tried to speak calmly.

"Don't treat me like a naughty child, Freddy. If it gets hotter than the Inferno I won't leave the place until I hear from Michael." She was not going to be a Lampton in one respect and not in another. A horse with the staggers was not in it with a mulish Lampton.

"If you hear from him, or find undeniable proofs that the story is true, will you go then?"

"Yes, when Michael tells me with his own lips, or I see it in his own handwriting, or I myself am convinced that Millicent was with him, I will meekly obey you. You can rely upon the Lampton pride. It won't fail me."

"Right you are, old girl! That's all I'll ask." Freddy bent down and pressed her head to his breast. "I hope to God that will never be, old lady, you know that."

Freddy's little touch of tenderness was the last straw. It was too much for Meg. She turned round and hid her face against his shoulder. A very fountain of weeping welled up.

"You dear, blessed old thing! I've been a brute, a perfect brute, but I love him awfully! Oh, Freddy, you don't know how much I can love, and you hurt me dreadfully!" She had sobbed out the words. The fiery Lampton was now a sorrowing, heartsick girl, hungering for her lover's caresses. Freddy's gentleness had called up a thousand wants.

Freddy knew that affection was what she needed, but he was a bad hand at any show of brotherly emotion. The Lampton men were fine lovers; no woman had ever found them wanting in the art. But it was part of their tradition to suppress all outward signs of family affection. Instinct told him that some caresses and a petting were what his sister longed for. For weeks she had been robbed of a lover's devotion, a very fine lover, who had filled her days with romance and her heart with song.

"You weren't a bit a brute, Meg. You were just as usual, a bit more like a man than a girl. I'd have done and said just as you did if anyone had said things about the woman I loved—or, I hope I should."

Meg only hugged her brother. Words were beyond her. She knew by the way he was speaking that he was quite glad to help her, now that he had got over the disagreeable business of telling her and warning her, that his efforts would be turned now towards the finding of Michael's whereabouts and dotting to the bottom of the gossip. She looked up with cheerful eyes.

"Do you remember that day, Freddy, when Millicent Mervill lunched here?"

"Rather!"

"And you said she came for some object which she took care not to reveal?"

"Yes, I remember."

"Well, I never told you, because I thought you had good reason for thinking that I was too hard on her, that I was jealous of her, to the exclusion of all reason. . . ."

"You are pretty good at hating, Meg."

"Well, Mohammed Ali has since told me where he found her eye of Horus. Guess where it was."

Freddy laughed. "I'm sure I couldn't."

"She read my diary all the time she was here alone. He says she asked if she might rest and tidy up in my room. He found the eye of Horus just beside the table where she had been reading it. He thinks that it must have caught in the key of the drawer in the table. Probably she thought we were coming and moved quickly away—the ring was easily wrenched open."

"The little cad!" Freddy said slowly. "The venomous little toad!"

"In my diary, Freddy, I referred to Michael's strange journey, his journey to King Solomon's Mines, as we always called it."

Freddy freed himself from his sister's arms and lit a cigarette.

"What a mean little brute! Mohammed Ali was probably in her pay; he told her he had found the eye at the spot where she dismounted."

"He said he told that lie because Madam made a face at him. He confesses to that."

Freddy thought for a moment while he smoked, then he said slowly and deliberately: "If she got that information from your diary, she could easily get more. Baksheesh will make the dead give up their secrets. That is why Bismarck said to his generals, never tell your own shirt what you want kept a secret. Diaries are dangerous things, Meg."

"I wrote it in French," Meg said. "I thought only the servants would stoop to reading it and they can't read French."

"Next time, try invisible ink. In Egypt, once a thing is written or told, it is public property."

"I scarcely write anything now," she said. "I feel as if some spy will see it, and the dry bones of a diary never interest me."

As Freddy was leaving the sitting-room—he was going to bed for a couple of hours before he began work again—Margaret said to him:

"Just tell me before you go, where you first heard the report about Michael, and from whom you heard it."

"One or two days ago," he said. "I heard a smouldering gossip about it going on amongst the workmen. They'd got wind of it somehow. No one ever knows how these things begin. Then I met young King from Professor L——'s camp, and he told me the whole story. He knew Millicent very well. He said she's not what you could call an immoral woman so much as a woman without morals. He confesses he never met anyone in the least like her before, and he rather prides himself on his knowledge of the world—he would have us believe that he has seen a devil of a lot. He wondered at a man of Michael's refined temperament taking her into the desert in the way he has done."

"He never took her," Meg said. "Isn't it hateful, Freddy, hearing people make these assertions about our Mike?"

"That's what I meant," Freddy said, "when I told you that I hated your name being mixed up with his."

"Oh, that's not what troubles me. No one knows me out here, or my affairs. I meant that it's such a wicked libel on Michael, who's not here to defend himself."

"But if she's there with him, what can you expect the world to say, to believe?"

"If she followed him and joined him, it wouldn't be very easy to shake her off, would it?"

Freddy smiled. "You're right there—the fair Millicent wouldn't go because she wasn't wanted!"

"I often ask myself why and how we tolerated her."

"Did we?" Freddy laughed.

"Well, yes, we did. Even I found myself liking her that day after lunch. I began to wonder if I had always been too hard on her, if I had had my judgment perverted by my jealousy."

"Surely you're not really jealous of Millicent?" Freddy paused. "That is, if you are confident that Michael is not with her at the present moment?"

"I am confident, Freddy. All the same, I have lots to be jealous of. Her beauty amazes me every time I look at her and, after all, beauty is a rare and wonderful thing. Lots of women are good to look at and attractive, but Millicent is beautiful. You have often said how rare real beauty is and how carelessly we use the expression. Millicent deserves it."

"You needn't be jealous of mere beauty, Meg. Even when she's on her best behaviour, she never could impress a stranger as being anything but what she is, a soulless little minx."

"Yet you thoroughly enjoyed her company, Freddy."

"I know I did. She's amusing, her personality is stimulating. But I shouldn't like to have too much of it."

"Yet you'd have kissed her if you'd been alone with her—you said you'd try!"

Freddy did not deny the accusation.

"Men are queer things," Meg said; "but you must get off to bed, you look awfully tired."

She hated to have to send him away, for it was only on very rare occasions, and quite unexpectedly, that Freddy expressed his opinions. He belonged to the silent order of mankind; to strangers he never revealed himself; he rarely said anything in their presence which suggested that he had opinions at all, or that he was really an exceedingly thoughtful person. Meg knew that he had ideas and thoughts—very sound, clear ideas, too. She knew that Freddy thought while other men talked. All the same, his opinions and thoughts, apart from his profession, were apt to be strangled and suffocated by tradition. Tradition was a mighty force in the Lampton family. It almost, as Meg said, amounted to ancestor-worship. Freddy's choice of a profession had been his one act of emancipation. He had, according to family tradition, been destined for either the navy or the army, and it had taken no little strength of character to cut the first link in the chain.

When Freddy had gone to lie down and the little hut was left to its midday silence—the tropical breathless silence of Upper Egypt, when the sun is so hot that even a lizard would not venture from its shelter—Meg sat down on a chair close to the table, and laid her head on her arms.

She was tired, tired, tired. She must forget things for a little time, before she even tried to review the situation, or think out what was best to be done. If only she could will herself into absolute unconsciousness for a little time, how sweet it would be! If she let herself sleep—even though sleep seemed very far from her—she might dream of Millicent, and that would be worse than wakefulness and remembrance. To trust herself to the lordship of dreams was to seek refuge in the unknown, and that was dangerous. It was total unconsciousness which she desired, the restful unconsciousness of a blank mind. She remained perfectly still for a little time, asking for rest, asking for the power not to think. She concentrated her thoughts on this one desire; she opened her being for the reception of peace.

Suddenly the voice which heals spoke. It suggested a respite for her troubles. "No mind can remain a blank," it said. "Try instead to think of your vision, fill your whole being with its beauty, repeat to yourself all that happened during that wonderful revelation."

Unconsciously and swiftly Meg's painful thoughts drifted away. The picture of Millicent amusing and tempting her lover, which had danced before her eyes, was no longer there—or, at all events, it was not dominating her mind, and Freddy's words no longer rang in her ears. Her misery, made by her own thoughts, left her, as a headache leaves a sufferer when a sedative has been administered. The gentle voice, the divine attendant, achieved its work. Meg had asked for rest and for forgetfulness. Her prayer was being answered. It repeated to her the tender words of Akhnaton; it told her in Michael's own dear way the true explanation of her vision. With tightly-closed eyes and her head bowed, she saw again the whole scene. It was unnaturally vivid—the luminous figure, with the pitying, sorrowful eyes. As she gazed at it, to her spirit came the same quiet comfort as had come to her on that night when the vision had visited her. So clearly could she see the rays of Aton behind the high crown of Upper and Lower Egypt, that she lifted up her head. Perhaps He was there, in the sitting-room, standing just in front of her? Had the luminous body penetrated the darkness of her tightly-closed eyes?

Meg blinked her eyes to rid them of their confusion; her fingers had been tightly pressed against them. She looked fixedly into the space in front of her. Nothing was there; the room was just as it had been when she closed her eyes. The disordered table, the cigarette-ash in the two saucers, the crumbs from a Huntley and Palmer's cake on the table-cloth—these homely things struck her as incongruous. She had expected a vision of Akhnaton; she had hoped for it.

She put her head down on her arms again; her thoughts had been very sweet; with closed eyes they might come back again. How absurd it was to think of such material things as the silver paper round the imported cake, and to remember that Freddy had said he was sick of tinned apricot jam!

These domestic thoughts had taken but a second. She was going back to her vision and to the happiness it had given her.

And so it came to pass that just as Michael had found solace for heart and mind in the dancing of the daffodils which he had visualized in the eastern desert, so Meg's bruised heart lost its sense of fear in her visualizing of the world's first reformer.

* * * * * *

When Freddy returned to the sitting-room, refreshed and invigorated, he woke his sister by his noisy entrance. He was extremely angry with himself, and showed his sorrow very tenderly.

Meg looked at him with half-awakened senses. Where was she? What was she doing? What hour of the day was it?

"Never mind, Freddy, I've slept long enough." She smiled, and looked as though the thoughts from which she drew her happiness were far away.

Freddy put his two hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes. "Were your dreams very nice, old girl? You look as if you'd been playing on the Elysian plain, or had been re-born!"

Meg pulled-her brother's face down to the level of her own and whispered, "Heavenly, Freddy, heavenly!"



CHAPTER X

"Does my master feel refreshed?"

It was Abdul who spoke, as he wakened Michael after his midday siesta on the day which had brought them within sight of the Promised Land.

It had been a morning of intense heat; the desert held not one breath of air. The spell of Egypt, which is its light, had vanished; the vast emptiness was as colourless as Scotland in an east wind. Piled up on his camel, Michael had ridden under a raised shelter, such as is used by caravan travellers on long journeys. It was made of bamboos, bent into half-hoops and covered with a light canvas. Abdul had been afraid of exposing his master, in his uncertain state of health, to the full force of the desert sun. Michael had been very grateful, for during the last two days it had made him feel sick and his head had ached perpetually.

"A touch of the sun," was Abdul's expressive description of his condition. He knew the symptoms only too well, and fortunately he also knew how to treat them.

In answer to Abdul's question, Michael yawned and stretched out his arms. "Yes, greatly refreshed, Abdul. How long have I slept? What time is it? I feel very much better."

"The Effendi's words give happiness to his servant," Abdul said. "With care my master will enjoy good health in a day or two."

"I'm all right now, Abdul. That last compress has done me a world of good. My headache has lifted." It was characteristic of Michael's temperament that when he was down, he was very, very down, and when he was up, he bounded and became scornful of all care and precautions.

"Everything is in readiness when my master is ready," Abdul said. "There are still three hours before sunset."

Michael rose from the impromptu couch which Abdul had made for him under the shadow of a mighty rock. The desert was no longer a shoreless sea of golden sand; they were reaching the reef of hills which was their objective.

When Michael found himself on his feet and ready to mount his camel—that undignified proceeding, which always made him realize his own helplessness and evoked from the camel ugly roars of justifiable resentment—he found himself scarcely as fit as he had thought; he was giddy and still distressingly tired. It was very annoying, not feeling up to his best form, now that they were drawing so close to the exciting spot. He had imagined that he would feel like a gold-miner hurrying to peg out his claim, instead of which he was conscious of but one feeling, physical and nervous exhaustion.

He braced himself up. The air was cooler; a little breeze was lifting the sand and carrying its invisible atoms across the surface of the desert. How many times on his journey he had seen this noiseless drifting of the sand! Now, as he watched it from his high seat, it made him think of the saint's grave. Even in this short time much sand would have collected on the mound which covered his bones.

This ceaseless drifting of the sand was an object-lesson which illustrated very practically the complete obliteration of Egypt's ancient cities and lost civilizations. Michael knew that on such a day as this he had only to lay some small object down in the desert, and very soon an accumulation of sand would gather round it. After a little time the object would be completely lost to sight, and in its place there would be a little mound, which would grow and grow as the years rolled on, until it became a feature in the landscape. In such a way were the neglected temples of the gods saved from the ravages of fanatics.

To Michael this provision of Nature, this preserving of the world's earliest treasures and story, was very beautiful. It meant a great deal more than the mere accumulation of wind-blown sands; it meant that the Creating Hand is never still, that the making of the world is eternal. In Michael's opinion there was no doubt but that Egypt's priceless treasures had been designedly hidden, that the Author of Nature had preserved them until such a time as mankind was capable of appreciating them and guarding them. The drifting sands—ever at the caprice of the four winds to those who have eyes to see and see not—have saved Egypt's history, which is written in stone.

Reflecting, as was his wont, on these side-issues of the world's evolution, he journeyed on. The breeze was stiffening, a cool, invigorating breeze, which had cleared the sky and brought some white clouds into it. In the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings the heavens rarely held a cloud; in the eastern desert his travels had carried him northwards, where the dews are heavier and the sudden changes in the temperature less noticeable.

With the cooler atmosphere his spirits rose, his vitality quickened. Wonderful pictures danced before his eyes, pictures which he had seen over and over again, his first visualizing of the treasure. The vision had never been far from his mind. He could see himself inspecting the bars of gold which Akhnaton had hidden in the hills, and fingering the ancient jewels while he thought once more of the story he had been told by a member of an excavating camp in Egypt. The story reassured him: Some native workmen, belonging to the camp, had come across a number of terra-cotta crocks hidden under a flight of steps. They were full to the brim of bars of pure gold. The gold had obviously been thrust into the jars very hurriedly. The theory they suggested to experts was that the citizens, suddenly becoming alarmed by the approach of a besieging army, had thrust the wealth of the public treasury into the jars and hidden them in the hollow behind the steps of a staircase in some public building. If the Romans ever besieged the city, they had overlooked the jars and so the gold had remained in its simple hiding-place until the enthusiasm of modern Egyptologists discovered it. In the jars there was sufficient gold to pay for a year's excavation on the historical site.

Michael knew that such things were possible in Egypt, where tales as wonderful as any in A Thousand and One Nights are still being enacted. Egypt's buried treasures are infinite. In that land of amazing discoveries there has been nothing more amazing than the means of their discovery.

High up in the blue, on his swaying seat on the camel's back, he felt like a man in a cinematograph-theatre, gazing upon film after film as it came into view and dissolved away.

The desert was the stage, his thoughts were the films. At one moment the picture presented was his old friend in el-Azhar, rejoicing in the knowledge that Michael's journey was accomplished, the treasure realized. He could see the African's eyes glowing like living fire; he could hear his sonorous chanting. His next vision was of Margaret and her triumphant happiness; the next his own troubles and embarrassments, the troubles of too great wealth. What was he to do with the treasure now that he had discovered it? There were new laws and stringent regulations and restrictions which must be adhered to; the Government had become more grasping.

But these troubles he put aside. "Sufficient for the day was the finding thereof," the proving to scoffers that visionaries had legs to stand upon as well as heads. He could hear Freddy's boyish laugh, a laugh of sheer incredulity and amazement, and while Freddy laughed he could see and feel Margaret's eyes shining with victory. It made him very nervous and excited to think that soon he would be able to actually touch and examine the treasure and sacred writings of the world's first divinely-inspired prophet. The doubts of his material mind would be forever silenced when his fingers had held the jewels and his eyes had seen the gold.

Again he felt convinced that the spirit of Akhnaton had selected him to do this work. Freddy had been chosen to bestow upon mankind the contents of the royal tomb, which held such a mass of confounding matter. We are all the chosen workers in the Perfect Law, units in the Divine State.

As he rode on and on, he wondered what Abdul was thinking about, what his feelings were. Was he anticipating disappointment or success? What had his eyes seen?

They were approaching the spot indicated by the saint. It would, of course, take them some time to discover the chamber which held the hidden treasure, but it was sufficiently thrilling to be drawing nearer and nearer to the hills. The canvas had been removed from his sun-shelter; only the framework remained. It looked like the skeleton-ribs of an animal against the blue of the sky.

Suddenly Abdul came riding forward. He had something to say; he never disturbed Michael's meditations unnecessarily.

"Does the Effendi see anything in the distance?"

"No, Abdul, nothing. What do you see?"

Abdul's calm voice had betrayed a little emotion.

"Look once more, Effendi—over there, to the left, close to the hills."

Michael looked, and while he looked he was conscious of an ominous atmosphere in the silence.

"Can the Effendi see nothing?"

"No, Abdul, absolutely nothing. Yet I thought my eyes had improved, my seeing-powers developed. I was vain enough to think they were pretty good."

"For Western eyes they do see far, Effendi. You must allow some few privileges for those who are deprived of the benefits of civilization."

They rode on in silence.

"You can see something now, Effendi?" Abdul's voice trembled as it broke the stillness. "It is very clear now, O my master."

"Is it a mirage, or what, Abdul? What am I to see?"

"No mirage, Effendi—I wish it were one."

"Then out with it!" Michael said impatiently. He had not the vaguest idea what Abdul was hinting at; his mind had no room for side issues. "What desert monster lies in waiting for us? Don't make such a mystery out of nothing!"

"It is the Khedivial flag, O Effendi. I see it fluttering in the breeze."

"The Khedivial flag?" The words conveyed no meaning to Michael; the reason for its being there did not penetrate his brain. "What is there to trouble us about the Khedivial flag, Abdul?'"

"Aiwah, Effendi, do not feel anger in your heart for your servant when he tells you what it means."

"We ate the salt of our covenant together, Abdul, on the night when you brought the saint in your arms to my camp. I can never forget that you are more than my servant. You are my friend and companion."

"Our faith is a gift of God, Effendi, and all the good works we perform are the effects of a principle implanted and kept alive within us by the Spirit of God."

"Granting that is so, Abdul, which I do, nevertheless, the covenant of our friendship is sacred. Tell me, why does the flag trouble you?"

"Can my master see it now? Can he not distinguish any other objects?"

Michael looked again. They had travelled quickly. As he looked his heart stopped beating; his brain became confused; he felt like a drunken man. Clearly his eye had seen!

"My God!" he said inaudibly. "It can't be that, it can't be that!"

To his naked eye the crescent and the star on the waving flag were still invisible, but he could see its vivid red, and he could see other objects—white patches, like a collection of saints' tombs.

"Abdul," he said—his voice was miserably broken and spent—"what are those white things?"

"Tents, Effendi."

"Government tents?"

"Aiwah, Effendi."

"What are they doing near the hills?"

"Must Abdul speak the words which will cause his master pain? Will the Effendi not wait until we draw nearer? It is not wise to anticipate evil."

A horrible suspicion devastated Michael's brain. He could brook no uncertainty. Abdul's lengthy manner of getting to the point irritated him as it had never done before.

"Out with it, Abdul! Having said so much, you must say more." Michael was compelling his servant to give utterance to the suspicion which had become almost a certainty in his mind.

"Aiwah, Effendi. The treasure has already been discovered."

"Good God! Do you think it is that, Abdul?"

"Aiwah, Effendi." Abdul's voice was contrite.

Michael felt as if all movement in the world had suddenly been arrested. Then his mind began scrambling amid the ruins of his dreams for some lucid thought, for some reason which would explain why he was seated high up on a camel's back in the eastern desert.

He had never dreamed of such an ending to his dreams. In his most despondent moods he had contemplated no greater misfortune than the stealing of the jewels and the gold, the looting of its portable treasures by native antika hunters. His super-man had never seriously contemplated even that misfortune; his faith was unshaken, his optimism complete.

The shock he had received affected his physical as well as his mental condition. An overwhelming desire came to him to get off his high seat and throw himself down on the sand and go to sleep for ever and ever. That hateful flag, those smiling tents! whose whiteness had brought a vision of Millicent's tent floating before his eyes.

"There are three tents, Effendi. Shall we journey towards them?" Abdul's voice sounded far away. What was he talking about? Michael tried to concentrate his thoughts.

"Oh yes, of course!" His voice was listless. "We must go on. You may be wrong." He struggled for mind-control.

He urged his camel to a quicker pace. They rode on in silence. Abdul was now convinced that the harlot—or, in other words, Mohammed Ali's "golden lady"—had wreaked her vengeance on his master. He had taken into his camp the fever-stricken saint; she had slipped away in the night and discovered the treasure. With a comprehensiveness which would have astounded the impurest of Western ears, he cursed Millicent and her vile offspring into the third and fourth generations.



CHAPTER XI

As Michael got off his kneeling camel, a young Englishman left a tent, the outer one of the three which formed the excavation-camp, the white tents which Michael had seen from his high seat, and came quickly forward. It was obvious that strangers might come thus far and no further. In a voice of official authority, yet by no means ungraciously, he said to Michael:

"Can I do anything for you? What do you want? I'm afraid you can't come any nearer."

Michael looked blankly into the thin, intelligent face, a sunburnt face, which any woman would have described as attractively ugly. For a moment or two neither man spoke. There was an unpleasant silence. It was significant of the atmosphere of the meeting. It expressed to the excavator strain, rather than shyness, on the traveller's part. He had told Michael that he might come no further; he had asked him if he wanted anything.

At both remarks Michael almost laughed hysterically. He was not allowed to come any closer to his own treasure, to the gift of Akhnaton, to the legacy of the Pharaoh, which had been divinely revealed to him! This interloper had asked him if he wanted anything!

Quicker than light these thoughts flashed through his bewildered brain, while between himself and this representative of the Government the figure of the world's first divinely-inspired man, with the rays of Aton shining brilliantly from behind his head, became clearer and clearer. It obliterated the figure of the excavator.

"What are these tents doing here?" He managed to ask the question by sheer force of will power; he felt relieved that the words had come. "And that flag?"—he pointed to the Khedivial banner.

His companion hesitated for a moment. Who was this dazed questioner, who had suddenly appeared out of the sands of the desert? He looked almost as worn and physically exhausted as a desert fanatic.

"This is an excavation camp which has just been sanctioned by the Minister of Public Works. We are engaged in making temporary researches. The time-limit is one month."

Without being in the least discourteous, his words conveyed the impression that in so short a time there was more to be done than talk to curious travellers.

"How long has the camp been here?" Michael asked. "I hope you won't think my questions impertinent. I have a very particular reason for wishing to know."

The blue eyes in the thin face became more alert. They searched Michael's face with the same scrutiny as they searched the debris of the ruins.

"About four days," he said coldly.

"Has the Government claimed the site?" Michael's voice trembled as he asked the question; it was so hard to keep cool.

"The Government is entitled to expropriate any land containing antiquities on paying a valuation and ten per cent. over, but this, of course, was not private property. It belongs to the Government."

"Yes, of course. I know something about these new rules—I have been working with Lampton in the Valley."

"Oh!" The stranger's voice at once became cordial and intimate. "I didn't know that I was speaking to a fellow-digger. How's Lampton?"

"I wasn't actually digging—I was doing some painting for him, and inking the pottery drawings. His latest discovery has developed amazing theories."

"So I've heard. But you look a bit done up. Come inside and have a drink." Before entering the tent, the stranger looked round. "Who's your man? Is he all right?"

"He's one of Lampton's men—absolutely trustworthy. He's been more than a servant to me for some weeks now." Michael paused, and then said abruptly, "Who told the Government of this site? What do you expect to find?"

"Will you first tell me where you got your information? Did you know we were here?"

"The Omdeh in the subterranean village spoke of it. He told me that the natives had discovered a hidden treasure, a sort of King Solomon's Mine, and that they were wading knee-deep in jewels and falling over crocks stuffed with Nubian gold—a desert fairytale, I suppose?"

"Absolutely! If there ever was any gold, it was not here when we arrived, and as for the jewels. . . !" He laughed. "Hallo! Are you feeling queer?"

Michael had managed to get inside the tent, but it was the limit of what his legs and head were fit for. He collapsed on to a lounge, made of wooden boxes covered with some rugs.

The stranger unfastened the padlock of a similar box to one of those upon which he was sitting with a key which hung from a chain at his side. He raised the lid; it had been converted into a wine-cellar.

"Hold hard," he said, in a kindly voice. "I'll give you a drink."

Michael was not fainting; he was merely in a state of physical collapse. He gladly accepted the proffered hospitality.

When he had swallowed the whisky, he said: "I'm sorry, but I've been feeling a bit queer lately. For some days past I've had a touch of the sun." He could not tell this stranger of his bitter disappointment.

"Have you ridden far to-day?"

"Yes. I've been in the desert for some time now. We started this morning at dawn." He put the glass down on the rough trestle-table. "Thanks most awfully. I feel a lot better. You said there was no truth in the report about the gold and the jewels—what are you expecting?"

"We have seen no trace of gold so far, but you must remember that it was a native who brought the information. Any discoverer is bound to inform the Government, and any portable object accidentally found must be given up within six days."

"But the finder receives half its value?"

"Yes, but if there was this treasure-trove of gold and jewels, it's doubtful if natives would hand that over. It would have been a different thing if it had been monumental objects, or even antiques, as they always run the risk of being caught trafficking in them. They would be inclined to think that half their value is better than none, with the added risk of the heavy penalty. The new rules are very stringent."

"But the jewels? Is there no trace of any precious stones? Don't you think there's a little fire for all that smoke?"

"We heard all these wonderful reports, but we have found no trace of any treasure. What the native reported was that he, along with some other fellahin, had accidentally come across some traces of ancient masonry, not far from Akhnaton's tomb. After digging for a few days, they discovered an underground passage, which led into a chamber; in it we came upon some papyri."

"You have found papyri?" Michael said. His tired eyes suddenly glowed; his excitement was obvious.

"Yes, we have found papyri. They promise to be of exceptional interest."

"Of what dynasty?" Michael could scarcely speak, or hide his anxiety while he waited for an answer to his question. To be able to assume an outward appearance of calmness, he was putting a great strain on his self-control. He held himself so well in hand that the stranger little guessed how much his answer meant to the exhausted traveller.

"Amenhotep IV."

A cry rang through the room. "Akhnaton! did you say? Then it is true!" Margaret, the old man in el-Azhar, and the saint, they had all seen and spoken the truth. For a moment the stranger was forgotten. It was Margaret who was looking at him with glad triumphant eyes. Happy Meg!

"Yes, the heretic Pharaoh," the stranger said, as he gazed fixedly at Michael. Was this man more than a little touched with the sun? He felt nervous of how to proceed. Why was he so excited and pleased? "These hills, you know, were the boundary of his capital. You appear interested in him? He certainly was a wonderful character."

The more conventional and colder tones of his voice made Michael guarded. Kind as he was, he was just the type of man who would laugh to scorn anything he might have told him. Freddy's friendly laughter never troubled Michael; the scorn of a stranger was a different thing.

"Have they deciphered any of the papyri?"

"No, we haven't had the time. We've only gone into them sufficiently to discover their date. This is, of course, a temporary search. We can only do in a month what is absolutely necessary. If regular excavations are to be made, which I presume there will be, we shall, of course, have to wait for a bit, while the final regulations are gone through, and until the necessary money is forthcoming. These last new rules and restrictions are putting a stop to any private enterprise. There is nothing left to pay the cost of the dig."

"On the whole, I suppose, they do good?"

"They don't do what they were meant to do—and that is, stop the stealing and the selling of valuable antiques which the Government, rightly enough, does not wish to leave the country, and desires to have the disposal of."

"I had hoped the new restrictions would stop that."

"You see, the penalties only apply to the natives and the Turks, with the result that the native dealer simply puts an Italian or a Greek name over his door. To the foreigner, the native is only the agent, officially—the dealer is the Greek or Italian whose name is over the door."

"They'd be sure to get out of the difficulty somehow," Michael said. "About antiques they have no conscience, and they are awfully clever."

"An inspector may now raid their premises at any time of the day or night, and nothing is allowed to be sold outside authorized and licensed shops. Every dealer has to keep a day-book, with an entry of each object in his shop over five pounds in value, the purchaser's name must be filled in, and every page of the register sealed by the Inspector of Antiquities."

Michael laughed. "Trust the native mind to find a way to circumvent all these fine restrictions!"

His thoughts had flown to Millicent. If she had, as Abdul believed, discovered the jewels and the gold, where were they now? It was very odd that, even with this damning evidence that she had anticipated his find before his eyes—for she and she alone could have known of it—his finer senses refused to believe that she had cheated and tricked him. He had no argument to put forward to justify his belief; it was one of those beliefs which are rooted in something finer and truer than circumstantial evidence. His only argument in her favour was that he had never found her mercenary, but, as Abdul had answered him, a woman will sell her soul for jewels.

He felt woefully sick and dejected, far too physically exhausted to run the risk of exposing himself to the scorn and laughter of the excavator, who was speaking to him in a manner which unconsciously betrayed to the hypersensitive Michael that he considered the traveller rather too odd to waste much valuable time over. Michael wondered, in a slow, broken sort of way, what the cold eyes would look like if he suddenly produced the uncut crimson amethyst from the purse in his waistbelt. He would probably have said that it was a clever part of the native fable; he would probably say that the ancient stone might have come from any royal tomb in Egypt, that it proved nothing.

As a lengthy silence had elapsed, Michael felt that it was incumbent on him to be getting on his way. He must pretend to the excavator that he was now well enough to resume his journey. As he rose, rather inertly, from his low seat, he said:

"You say the native who brought the information of the find said nothing at all about the jewels and the gold?"

"Not a word! We have heard all that since. As you know, news travels in the desert in the most amazing fashion, once the natives get ear of it."

"Won't you try and follow up the track of the story—find out how it originated? Are you content to take it for granted that it is all moonshine?"

"We are doing something about it—but it's very difficult." The stranger spoke guardedly. "The only way is to set a thief to catch a thief. Gold can be melted, ancient stones can be cut, a hundred dealers will be eager to run any risk to get them."

A flood of anger coloured Michael's face; it brought out beads of perspiration on his forehead. He could scarcely contain himself; his rage tore at his bowels. His long journey, all that he had gone through—was this the end of it? Could anything be more fiat, more stale, more unprofitable? What a sudden tumble from the blue to brown earth! Above all, how maddening to have to hold his tongue, because no man would believe the story he could tell them, to have meekly to submit to the conventional etiquette of the moment! He felt anything but conventional. His anger had driven all finer feelings from his mind. If he could only find the native who had desecrated the treasure-trove, he would hang and quarter him without mercy!

"I'm afraid I must be getting back to my work," the excavator said. "But you needn't hurry. Rest here for as long as you like, only don't think me inhospitable if I leave you. Time's too precious to waste one moment."

"Thanks very much," Michael said. "But I'm quite fit. You've been awfully kind. It's time I was on my way."

"Where are you going to?"

"Back to my camp."

"Back to your camp? where did you leave it?"

Michael told him.

"Then did you come on here on purpose to visit this dig? Had you heard of it before you saw the Omdeh in the underground village?"

"I'd rather not answer your question at present, if you don't mind. All that I know about it, Lampton also knows. . . . Some day, I hope, if we meet again, I will tell you the whole thing. It's an odd story, even for Egypt."

The man looked annoyed. "You can't tell me anything more? Have you any information that could help us? We have our suspicions that things aren't straight. If the natives weren't wading knee-deep in jewels, there was probably, as you say, some truth in the report that there were valuable antiques."

"I've nothing reliable to go upon," Michael said. "Nothing that a man in his normal senses would pay any attention to—that was Lampton's verdict."

Again the stranger looked at Michael with calm, searching eyes.

"Yet you believe in what you heard? You believed enough to bring you across the desert to find it?"

"If you ask Lampton, he'll tell you that I'm not quite in my normal senses—that I frequently walk on my head."

"Lampton's a sound man."

"Well, that's his opinion."

"You're a rum chap," the stranger said, as he noticed that a glint of humour had for the moment driven the expression of exhaustion from Michael's eyes. "Anyhow, I hope you'll not feel too knocked up when you arrive in camp, and that we'll meet again."

"I feel as if I could sleep for a year."

"Have another whisky before you go?"

"No thanks. I think one has been more than enough—it's made me confoundedly tired."

They were standing at the open front of the tent.

"Good-bye," Michael said. "And thanks most awfully for your hospitality. I suppose you won't settle on the work here until next season?"

"No, it will be hot enough at the end of three weeks, though it's cooler here than with Lampton in the Valley. If the money is forthcoming, we shall take up work again next October."

They parted abruptly, as Englishmen do. Two fellahin, mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, would have gone through a set formula of graceful words before they separated. They are ever mindful of the teachings of the Koran, which says:

"If you are greeted with a greeting, then greet ye with a better greeting. God taketh account of all things."

Michael had turned his back on the stranger and the waving flag. Mechanically he put his hand to his belt-pouch. Yes, the crimson amethyst was still there. He felt for it as though he were in a dream. The bright light made him giddy. The stone was his link with and his tangible assurance that the life which he had led for the past weeks was a reality; it was his sacred token that the vision of Akhnaton was no mere phantom of an over-imaginative brain. Yet, even as he felt its hard substance between his thumb and forefinger, he wondered if it was really there. He knew that imagination can create strange things; phantom tumours have been produced by imagination, tumours which are visible to a physician's eye while the patient is conscious and his mind obsessed with the conviction that it is there; he knew that such swellings disappear when the patient is asleep. He felt dazed, and as if he himself were unreal; his feet refused to tread firmly on the earth; they never managed to reach it. When he looked for Abdul and the camels, they were floating in the heavens above the horizon, miles and miles away; there was a belt of sky between them and the desert sand. If his legs had been paralysed, they could not have felt heavier or more useless.

He struggled on, but very soon the desert and the sky became one; the world in front of him rose suddenly up and stood on end. It was quite impossible to reach Abdul—he was receding as the horizon recedes when a clear atmosphere foreshortens the distance. In his brain there was a confused jumble; it was full of things which had no meaning or cohesion. Millicent was the centre of the absurd medley, Millicent, naked and unashamed, her slender figure as thickly covered with uncut jewels of huge dimensions as the statues of Diana of Ephesus are covered with breasts. The jewelled vision of Millicent dominated every other picture in his brain. It was clearer than the village of flies, or the African's cell in far-off el-Azhar, or the procession of white figures returning from the burial of the desert saint. It moved along in the clear air in front of him. He had no reasoning powers left, or he would have asked himself why his subconscious brain had fashioned this vision of Millicent wearing the sacred jewels when he still believed in her innocence. The clear voice, man's divine messenger, had kept him assured of the truth of his conviction.

Everything was dreadfully confused. He wished that the horizon would not come right forward and almost throw him off his balance. He seemed to be constantly hitting up against it. And Abdul, why was he floating further and further away? The harder he tried to get to him, the further he went. And yet he could actually hear him reciting his prayers. He was telling his rosary. Why did he tantalize him by coming so near and then floating off again? Sometimes he came so near that he could see his fine fingers automatically pulling the beads along the string; a tassel of red silk hung from the end of it. There were ninety-nine small red beads and one large one. He had reached the fifty-ninth. Michael could tell that, because the words "O Giver of Life" came to him sonorously across the desert stillness. The next one would be "O Giver of Death," but Abdul had floated away again. Now he had come back; he had said "O Living One," "O Enduring," "O Source of Discovery."

That was the sixty-third bead. Why had Abdul stopped at that one? Why did he keep on repeating the words "O Source of Discovery," "O Source of Discovery"? He ought to pass on to the next—"O Worthy of All Honour," and after that the sixty-fifth, "O Thou Only One." No one ever stopped at the sixty-third bead; all the attributes of Allah had to be recited. But Abdul was still saying it over and over again. "O Source of Discovery," "O Source of Discovery." The words danced before Michael's eyes in letters of gold, like the advertisement of Bovril which he had watched so often from the Thames Embankment, as it appeared and disappeared in the sky across the river.

And then again the letters were obliterated by the nude figure of Millicent, with her hanging breasts of jewels. How delicate her limbs were, how white her skin! The sun would blister it; if he could only reach her, he would give her his coat. Like himself, she was walking in the clear air and not on the firm earth. She was walking as St. Peter had walked on the waves of the sea.

Then something happened. He stumbled and would have fallen, but for a great strength which gathered him up and sheltered him under the shadow of Everlasting Arms.

* * * * * *

Abdul, with Eastern philosophy, had sat himself down to wait while his master interviewed the director of the "dig." His soul was vexed and his mind was ill at ease. His master's health was the principal cause of his anxiety. His anger at the harlot, and his disappointment, mingled with this anxiety, made him unusually despondent.

He seated himself on a knoll where his master could easily see him when he left the excavator's tent. It was not yet time for the performance of his maghrib, or sunset prayer, which had to be said a few minutes after the sun had set. He began to recite his rosary, telling an attribute of God to each bead. When he had got about half-way through the long list of names which form the Mohammedan rosary and by which the Moslem addresses his Creator, he saw Michael leave the tent and walk out into the sunlight.

For a moment or two he seemed to be walking quite steadily and to be coming towards him. Then suddenly he began to stagger and lurch like a drunken man.

Abdul rose from his seat and hurried towards him. What had seemed such a long way to Michael had only been a few yards. His visions and fears and the constant repetition of the sixty-third attribute of Allah had been concentrated into the last few seconds before he stumbled and fell, just as our dreams are enacted in the last moments before we wake. Abdul had scarcely said the words "O Source of Discovery" for the first time when he rose from his seat and hurried to his master, who had stumbled and fallen. In his Moslem arms was God's Everlasting Mercy.



CHAPTER XII

The heat in the Valley had become intense. The work in the excavation-camp was at a standstill; nothing more could be done on the actual site until the late autumn.

Margaret and Freddy were soon to say good-bye to the little hut which had been their home for many months.

No direct news had come to them of Michael. Freddy had heard many accounts and varying reports from unreliable sources of his travels in the eastern desert. He was almost convinced that Michael's silence was due to the fact that there was some foundation for the scandal, which was persistent, that Millicent was one of his party. The report had drifted to him from so many sources that he could scarcely doubt it. It had sprung up and flourished like seed blown over light soil. He was loath to believe that his friend, even if it had not been by his own willing or desire, should have permitted the woman to stay with him when he was Margaret's acknowledged lover. He despised him for being such a weak fool. If Freddy could have left his work, he would have started off without delay to look for Michael, or at least he would have contrived to discover the reason for his silence and what degree of truth there was in the story of Millicent's being with him. Situated as he was, it was impossible for him to desert his post. He had purposely avoided opening up the subject again with Margaret; it was better to wait until a sufficient length of time had elapsed and then, if no word came from Michael, he would speak to her again and hold her to her promise to return home and try to drive the whole affair from her mind.

Even as he said the words to himself, he knew that they were absurd, that such a thing was hopeless. Meg was not the sort of woman to trust and love a man and then forget him. There could be no driving him from her mind. Freddy knew that she had enough strength of character to do whatever she thought was right. If circumstances compelled her to give Michael up, she would do it, but in so doing her youth would be killed, her heart broken. Her life would have to be re-made. A love like Margaret's was a serious thing; Freddy realized that. He must go to work carefully and judiciously.

It hurt him more than Meg ever knew, to watch her suffering and ever-growing anxiety. She made no complaint and very seldom alluded to her lover's silence or to his absence. When she spoke of him, it was generally to recall some happy incident which had happened in their secluded life, little things culled from the store-closet of her precious memories.

It was to the stars and to the wide heavens that her heart relieved itself. They heard the full story of her trust and loyalty and the confessions of her jealous woman's heart; they bore her cry to the understanding ear.

It was impossible for Margaret to believe any wrong of her lover. If she had short waves of doubt and agonizing moments of uncertainty and indecision, they were always dispelled by the sudden inflow of beautiful thoughts, which came like divine visions to her, as direct assurances of Mike's loyalty and steadfastness.

It was Freddy who caused her the cruellest suffering. It was so dreadful to think that he, of all people, doubted, distrusted Mike! If she had not cared for him so greatly it would not have mattered, but apart from Michael he was the being she loved and respected most on earth. His eyes haunted her; the doubt in them never left her mind; it argued against her finer judgment. That her dear chum should be working against her higher voice, her super-self, troubled her. It seemed to set up a barrier between them, which was the cruellest part of the whole affair. If he would only let her alone, she would go to some cooler spot and there wait and wait until Michael came to her, for she knew that he would come back to her, bringing her the same beautiful love as he had carried away. She knew perfectly well that in spite of her foolish fits of depression and distrust, he was wholly and absolutely hers while he was alive on this earth.

Freddy bore the expression of one who was waiting to deliver judgment. Meg could see his annoyance kindling day by day. She could feel him looking at her when he thought that she was not noticing. The deeper circles under her eyes told Freddy their tale; the sagging of her clothes, as they hung from her boyish limbs, the pitiful flattening of her young breasts. This new and delicate-looking Margaret was very beautiful. Our Lady of Sorrows had laid her hand upon her with a softening grace; the new Meg had acquired what boyish Meg had never possessed. Under her eyes, on her clear skin there were dark shadows, which looked as if they had been made by the impress of carboned thumbs which had pressed tired eyes to sleep. Meg's steadfast, honest eyes now expressed things of a deeper meaning than mere comradeship and brains; their beauty was quickened by the soul of suffering. Even in Freddy's eyes she was much more attractive than she had been six months ago. She was now a great deal more than merely pretty. As he watched her bearing her anxiety and what appeared to him her humiliation with so much calm dignity and braveness, he said to himself over and over again, "She's a thousand times too good for a man who could behave like a weak fool, if indeed Mike isn't worse!"

He was looking at her now, as she lay in a deck-chair, her eyes closed and her hands folded across her book. They had both been reading, after a hard day's work. Meg had not turned many pages of her book; her thoughts had wandered. As she felt her brother's eyes upon hers, she raised her eyelids and looked at him steadily as she said:

"Freddy, I'm going to see Hadassah Ireton."

Freddy sat bolt upright. He, too, had been lying stretched out on a lounge-chair.

"Going to see Mrs. Ireton? But you don't know her!"

He did not ask Meg why she was going; he knew.

"That doesn't matter—I know all about her. My heart and mind know her, and, after all, that's the important thing—it's the only thing that matters."

"But, Meg——"

"Chum, no 'buts'—'buts' belong to small things. This is my life. We must do something. You can't leave your work; I am no longer needed."

"But what can Hadassah Ireton do?"

"I don't know—she'll know, I feel she'll know. That's why I'm going." She paused. "I've been told to go."

"Oh, nonsense! How's this going to clear things up?" Freddy paused.

"I don't know. If I did, I shouldn't go to the Iretons'. It's because I don't know, and nothing's being done, that I mean to go to her and consult her."

"But why on earth trouble a stranger? I dislike the idea."

"There are some human beings who are never strangers. Suffering unites people. Hadassah Ireton has suffered."

Freddy knocked the ash from his cigarette. A lump had risen up in his throat.

"What are you going to ask her to do?" Meg did not know the pain her words had given him; he spoke huskily.

"She's going to advise me what to do." Meg raised herself from her reclining position. "She will help me, if Michael's ill, Freddy."

"I don't suppose he is—I think we'd have heard."

"I think that's why we haven't heard," Margaret said quickly.

Freddy remained silent. He thought otherwise. He had a man's knowledge of men. If Millicent Mervill was with him, he did not for one moment believe that even Mike would be proof against such temptation.

"If he is ill," Meg said, "the Iretons will find out. They are in such close touch with native life. Anyhow, they understood Mike and I want to see them."

Meg's last words were a little cry. Freddy could only feel pity for her, although her words stung him. She must actually go from him to strangers for the sympathy she needed.

"Well, I won't stop you, but I think it's a pity. Whatever made you think of such a thing?"

"The thing that you call inspiration, chum—I know another name for it now."

Freddy looked amazed; Meg had absorbed so many of Mike's strange ideas. "I don't know Ireton," he said. His voice had grown colder.

"He married a Syrian—you wouldn't. The Lamptons don't do that sort of thing."

Freddy kept his temper, and the moment after Meg had said the words she felt ashamed, disgraced.

"I'm sorry, chum." She spoke gently. "It's my tongue that says these hateful things, not my heart. Forgive me, like a dear."

"All right, old girl." Freddy had never told his sister that he had refused the hospitality and cut himself off from the friendship of more than two English families, residents in Cairo, because they had taken a prominent part in the outcasting of Michael Ireton from English society when he had married Hadassah Lekejian. He knew that Margaret had spoken the words hastily and unthinkingly. When Meg's nerves were on edge was the only time she was ever cross and out of temper. "The Iretons are delightful people. If I'd known Ireton when he was a bachelor, I should have visited them after his marriage, but I didn't, and I haven't much time for paying society calls. Besides, it might have looked like patronizing them. The way they were treated by some of the English out here was so abominable that one had to be jolly careful. Ireton never minded a scrap—he's too big to care for the social rot that goes on out here, but all the same, I didn't like to make a point of calling. I'm a digger, Meg, not a resident with a house to invite people to."

"From what Mike told me, they must be the most delightful people. I can't imagine Hadassah snubbing me if I went to see her, can you?"

"I don't suppose she would. What will you say to her? It's a rum idea." Freddy became meditative.

"I don't know, but whatever one arranges to say on such occasions is just the thing one doesn't say. The atmosphere will suggest the words—it always does with me. I've never yet said the things I planned to say. Have you?"

"Scarcely ever, but it might be well to think things out." Freddy disliked the idea of confiding family secrets to strangers. "When do you think of going?"

"When you leave here, I can go straight to Cairo. It will be cooler there. I don't know Cairo—don't forget, I've never seen even the Pyramids."

"And when do you mean to go home? The season's getting on."

"I don't know. It all depends on what news I can gather, or if a letter comes. I can easily stay in Cairo until I hear. You won't object to that?"

"No. It's beastly hot here, by Jove!" Freddy poured himself out a lemon-squash and drank it off. "I'm not sorry it's time to go home."

"I don't feel the heat very much—the nights keep pretty cool."

"You're looking fagged, all the same."

"Oh, I'm all right—it's anxiety that kills. If only I was certain that he wasn't ill, Freddy!"

"I don't see why you should think Mike's ill. He's leading an awfully healthy life. He's well accustomed to the desert. It's cooler with him than it is here."

"I know, but it's a very strained life. I have a conviction that he's ill. Whenever I think intently of him, I see him ill and suffering. These things must have their meaning."

"I think we should have heard if he was ill. We got the other news quick enough, didn't we!"

Meg frowned.

"It will be cooler in Cairo, but give me your word that you personally won't do anything foolish in the way of looking for Michael, or going off alone into the desert."

"No, I won't do anything foolish. That's not in my line, is it now? I have some Lampton common sense."

"Not about some things."

Meg laughed. "Wait till you know what it is like, chum."

"Well, you'll not forget your other promise?"

Meg thought for a moment before answering and then she said emphatically, "No, I won't forget my promise. I'm not in the least afraid that I shall be tempted to break it."

"You have promised to go back to England if you find undeniable proof that Michael and Millicent were together in the desert."

"Yes, I promise. I will go back to the old life, which seems like a dream." Meg gave a little shiver as she visualized her old-world Suffolk home and the narrowness of her life there. "Any old place would do, chum, to bury myself in if my heart was broken."



CHAPTER XIII

Through a labyrinth of narrow streets, echoing with native cries and Oriental traffic, a wonderful sight and sensation to strangers unfamiliar with Cairene commercial life, Margaret Lampton found her way to "the home of enchantment," as she afterwards called the Iretons' ancient mansion. It was a native house, typical and expressive of the most resplendent years of the Mameluke rule in Egypt.

A licensed guide, with a brass-lettered number on his arm, in a blue cotton jebba and a scarlet fez, had volunteered to show her the way; it would have been impossible for a stranger to find it alone. The Cairene licensed guides, although they are pests, have their uses.

As Margaret passed under the lintel of the outer door, which led into a quiet courtyard, of Hadassah Ireton's house, a Nubian servant rose from the stone mastaba—the guards' seat—upon which he had been lying half asleep; he conducted her with the silence of a shadow to the gate of the inner or women's courtyard. This courtyard was overlooked by the women's quarters of the house only.

Margaret rather timidly entered the second courtyard. She scarcely knew what to expect. She was certainly not prepared for the vision of beauty which she saw directly the door was opened. She had heard nothing at all of the fantastic beauty of the superb old Mameluke palaces in Cairo; she did not know that the Iretons lived in one.

A fat servant, also a Nubian, but more amply clad the guard at the outer door, rose from a wooden seat, grown grey with age. With the same silence and mystery he conducted Margaret across the courtyard.

Margaret could, of course, only glance at the bewildering beauty of her mediaeval surroundings as she followed the servant, but brief as her vision of it was, it left a never-to-be-forgotten picture in her mind. A vision of coolness and peace, of oriel windows—chamber-windows for unreal people, jealously screened with weather-bleached meshrahiyeh work—and one high balcony, the special feature of the courtyard, a dream of romantic beauty, shaded by the dark leaves of an ancient lebbek tree. It was a vision as dignified as it was touching. It was like a lost piece of a world which had passed away, a lonely cloud which had detached itself from a world of romance and had hidden itself in the heart of a seething city of ugliness and sin.

Surprise temporarily drove from Margaret's mind the object of her visit; it was not until she was seated in the spacious room which overlooked the courtyard, and whose front wall consisted of the meshrahiyeh balcony—it was now Hadassah Ireton's drawing-room—that she was brought face to face with the unusualness of her visit.

The room was beautifully cool, screened as it was by the delicate lace-work. Meshrabiyeh was invented to fill two wants—to screen the windows through which women could look out, without being seen themselves, and to admit fresh air while it excluded the sun. It is a substitute for glass in a warm climate.

Margaret would have liked to have sat for a little time longer to collect her thoughts and to take in the beauty of the room; but that was not to be; the door opened and her hostess entered.

Of all the beautiful pictures which she had seen since she entered the inner courtyard of this mediaeval home, Hadassah Ireton was the most beautiful. She had brought her baby-boy with her; he was just learning to toddle. A sob rose in Margaret's throat, as she saw the fair-haired child beside the tall young mother.

Hadassah had greeted her with the conventional "How do you do?" Margaret answered it as conventionally.

Hadassah lifted her boy up and held him out to Margaret. "This is my son," she said. "I know he wants to welcome you."

The boy held up his face to be kissed. As he did so, Margaret took him in her arms and held him close to her breast. Hadassah, who had brought him to administer to that very want—a woman's empty arms—went to the balcony and made a pretence of letting in some fresh air and excluding the shaft of sunlight which was coming from one of the small oriels that had been left unclosed.

When she turned to her guest, she saw something very like tears in Margaret's eyes. The child, who did not know the meaning of the word fear or shyness, was speaking to Margaret as if he had known her all his short life.

"He has taken you into his elastic heart," Hadassah said. "Because, if you don't mind me saying so, I think we are rather like one another."

"Oh, no!" Margaret said impulsively, while she blushed. "I'm not like you!"

Her words were expressive of admiration. Hadassah did not pretend to misunderstand them; she was well accustomed to admiration.

"The boy sees the resemblance, I'm sure."

"We have both dark heads and we are both tall," Margaret said laughingly. "But there the likeness ends." She looked at Hadassah's eyes as she spoke and wished that she could believe that she was in the least like her. She had never seen such a beautiful expression in any woman's eyes before. Was she really the Syrian girl whom Michael Ireton had dared to marry?

"Let us sit down," Hadassah said. "But before we begin our talk, I must send Michael to the nursery. I am really so foolish about him—I wanted you to see him." She rang the bell and a pretty Coptic girl in native dress came into the room; the boy went on with her without demur. The girl had looked at Margaret with big brown eyes; they carried her mind back to the portraits of Egyptian women painted in Roman times on the walls of tombs.

"What a good little chap!" Margaret said. "I'm sure he wanted to stay with you. How marked the Coptic type is!—they are the true descendants of the ancient Egyptians, aren't they? He looked so fair beside her."

"Dear little son! He will be perfectly happy with her. He loves everybody and everything. I sometimes wonder if it means a lack of character. He rarely cries, and he sings baby-songs to himself all day long."

"What a darling!" Margaret said. "And how fair!"

"Yes," Hadassah said, "quite English." The words were spoken without malice, but they brought the colour to Margaret's cheeks. Hadassah saw it, and said laughingly, "I was granted my wish—I wanted to have a boy as like my husband as possible. He wanted a girl, I think."

Margaret laid her hand on Hadassah's arm. "Did you mind me writing?" she said. "I hope you didn't think it very odd?" Her voice broke. "I wanted your advice. I knew you and your husband could help me."

"Dear Miss Lampton," Hadassah said, "I'm so glad you wrote, and of course I understood. It's worth while to have suffered oneself, so as to be able to understand and help others in their suffering."

Margaret knew all that the words implied, but with her habitual reserve, she answered as though Hadassah had referred to her cousin's death. The Nationalist plot in which he was implicated had added to the horror which British society in Cairo had openly expressed at Michael Ireton's marriage with a Syrian, who was a cousin of the ill-advised youth.

"Michael told me something of the tragedy," Margaret said. "You must have felt his death terribly."

Margaret's words were conventional, but Hadassah did not miss the sympathy and feeling which lay underneath them.

"I did," Hadassah said. "But the boy would never have been happy—he was one of the pitiful instances you meet in Egypt; of misguided idealists. Girgis had a fine character, but he was fastened upon because of his wealth by the wrong set of the Nationalist party, who misled him and then turned on him and killed him because he wouldn't go as far as they wanted him to go in their horrible outrages. It was a pitiful story, greatly distorted and misinterpreted by the press."

"His death was splendid," Margaret said. "It wiped out all the rest—it proved his real worth."

"Yes," Hadassah said. "Poor Girgis died a hero's death. He was as brave as a lion. But come," she said, "let me hear your news. These things we are talking about are ancient history to everybody but myself, and I never think of them if I can help it. It is better not." She sighed reflectively. "Dear Girgis knows that I can never forget him. He gave me all his fierce young love at a time when it was very precious."

"Ignorance was at the bottom of it all," Margaret said. She was alluding to the behaviour of the British residents in Cairo in respect to Hadassah's marriage. Hadassah understood.

"I have learned to know and realize that," she said. "And, after all, one must pity ignorance. I have got so far that I can actually feel sorry for such narrow minds. As for Michael, he never gave it a thought. If our characters are widened through suffering, I have gained—they have lost. Something fine always leaves our natures when we do or think unkind things—nothing is truer or surer than that."

"Michael always says the same thing," Margaret said eagerly. "He thinks unkind thoughts and uncharitable acts—want of love, in fact—the unpardonable sins."

"Both our men have the same name." Hadassah's eyes smiled. "I like your man so much, if I may say so. He is worth a great deal. We can't expect big things to come to us in a small, mediocre way, can we?"

"I am so glad you like him," Margaret said. "And you believe in him? Your husband believes in him, in his . . ." she hesitated ". . . unpractical mind?" Hadassah's understanding and gentleness made her feel childishly weak. It would have been a relief to give way to weeping. Her nerves were at the point when any rebuke would have braced her sympathy was undoing.

"Why, of course!"

"May I tell you why I came?"

"Will you have some tea first? You are tired!"

"No thanks, really. I had numerous cups of coffee on my way here."

"Then let me hear all you want to tell me. Even if I can't help you, I know how nice it is to talk over one's troubles with another woman. You have lived very much cut off from women's society all these months. Where is Mr. Amory? Did he go into the desert? We haven't heard of him or from him since he spoke to my husband about going off on a long journey. He had a great scheme in his head. He's an odd creature." She laughed. "You and I both like individualities, I think."

"He went into the eastern desert soon after you saw him. I haven't heard from him since he went. His letters may have gone astray. But in the meantime a report has been spread abroad that he has taken a woman with him, a Mrs. Mervill. Have you heard of her?"

"Millicent Mervill? I know her!"

"Well, she is in love with him. You know how beautiful she is. . . ." Margaret's voice lost its steadiness.

"Yes, and also I know how thoroughly lacking in morals. She is very well-known by this time. Last season she was the fashion; she entertained lavishly. This year she has thrown caution to the winds."

"She certainly has, for she has positively hunted Michael to earth."

"Michael Amory, of all men!" Hadassah's laugh encouraged Margaret; it was so expressive of what she herself felt.

"Yes, I think she is annoyed because. . . ." Margaret paused ". . . well, I can't express what I mean, but Michael isn't that sort. He would be her friend if she would let him, but friendship isn't enough."

"I know what you mean. He certainly isn't that sort, there can be no mistaking that."

Margaret smiled happily. "Then you believe he isn't?"

"Of course! Who doesn't?"

"My brother objects to my name being mixed up in the scandal." Margaret had evaded answering Hadassah's question.

"But what scandal?"

"The reports that are going about that Mrs. Mervill is with him in the desert, that that is why I haven't heard from Mike. Everyone is saying it." Meg's words conveyed an apology for her brother.

"Your brother really believes this, and yet he knows Mr. Amory?"

"Yes. But you mustn't blame him. He has tried not to believe it; he is really awfully good about it all. And I must admit that it looks as if the story was true, but I just know it isn't."

"Of course it isn't!" Hadassah said, almost sharply. "Who spread the report?"

"First it came from the native diggers in the valley, and then my brother heard it from Mr. King. Now lots of people are talking about it, and my brother wants me to go home. . . . I've promised to go if . . ." Margaret paused. "That's why I came to you. I want your advice. If we could only hear from Michael, I know the whole thing would be explained. My brother would do anything he could to help me, but his business ties him and . . ." again she paused and then said hurriedly, "You know what men are—he hates my name being bandied about."

"I'll get my husband to comb out the truth from all these lies." Hadassah put her hand on Margaret's. "You'll laugh at your fears one day."

"If you only knew how thoughtless Michael is about the opinion of the world! If he isn't doing wrong, he never stops to think what construction the world may be putting on his action, nor does he care."

"Personally I think it's the malicious talk of some enemy, or of Mrs. Mervill herself. Can she have intercepted his letters, and spread the report so as to separate you?"

"She may have followed him. If she is with him, she is self-invited."

Hadassah Ireton interrupted her. "Even Mrs. Mervill could scarcely do that!"

"My brother says that I may wait in Cairo until we can find definite proofs one way or another. A letter may come from Michael at any moment. I know it will come if he is all right, but I'm so afraid he is ill—that is really what I came to ask you about."

"You want us to try to find out if he is ill?"

"Yes, if you will, if it is not asking too much. Something keeps on telling me that he is ill, that he is in need of help." Margaret was speaking more earnestly and with less restraint. "I have had queer visions and many presentiments since I lived in the Valley. I seem to be able to see beyond . . . if you know what I mean. They have come true in many instances—it is not mere imagination. But perhaps you have as little belief as I once had in these things?"

"Where ought Mr. Amory to be just now—have you any idea?" Hadassah's voice conveyed the idea to Margaret that the subject was too serious to be spoken of hastily or decisively.

"He ought to have reached his destination, the hills beyond the ruins of Tel-el-Amarna. Did you know the object of his journey?" Margaret spoke nervously, shyly; she shrank from speaking of her lover's belief in the treasure of Akhnaton.

"Yes. He told my husband the twofold reason of his wish to make the journey. He believes in the theory that there is a buried treasure in the hills beyond Tel-el-Amarna, where Akhnaton was buried, and I think he also wanted . . . what shall I say? . . . to find himself—I suppose I must use that hackneyed phrase for want of a better—to find himself in the desert. Wasn't that it?"

"Yes. He is a born wanderer." Margaret said the words dreamily; her thoughts had flown, to the luminous figure of Akhnaton. In this superb mansion, fashioned by Oriental genius and Eastern wealth and imagination, her vision took its place, not unnaturally, in the strange list of things which her eyes had seen or her mind had received during her life in Egypt.

"Will you enjoy a wandering life? Don't you think women like a home?"

"With an intellectual companion any place is home; with a stupid one a palace becomes a wilderness. I have learnt that in the desert, if I have learnt nothing else, I think. Michael could make a real home out of a bathing-machine and a box of books." She laughed. "He is never dull, he doesn't know the meaning of the word bored. His only trouble is that no day is long enough. He'd forget the dimensions of the bathing-machine—it would become to him a beautiful house like this."

"What a wonderful thing love is!" Hadassah said to herself, as she watched Margaret's eyes glow and shine. Her thoughts had transformed her. "A wonderful and beautiful thing! Whatever would the world be without it? And yet there are some people who go through life without the faintest idea of what it really means!"

"What we three have got to do," she said aloud, "is to discover where the wanderer is. The sooner he is found the sooner he can start life in a bathing-box. I agree with you so far that I think it's more than likely that he is ill—not necessarily seriously ill, but ill enough to have been delayed on his journey. Still, that is not the only solution of the problem. His letters may be lying in some native post-office. I've known letters remain for weeks on end in out-of-the-way village post-offices. The official can't read the address; he puts the letter aside until someone comes along who can. It may be sooner, it may be later; they eventually reach their destination."