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.