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."