Michael, who had been glad that she had not spoken—he would not have liked her so well if she had—said, "Please don't feel compelled to talk. I came to help you if you needed help, not to bother you or spoil your enjoyment."
"Thank you," she said. "I simply couldn't talk. Does one enjoy
Egypt?" she asked the question pertinently.
They rode on in silence again and Michael was pleased that temperamentally she seemed to "feel" Egypt. There had been no suggestion of psychic influence in her very evident acceptance of the power of Egypt—just a simple awe, which was to Michael absolutely natural.
Presently she said, "Does my brother live all alone in this valley?"
"Practically alone, for some months in each year. I am with him just now, and in the daytime there are the workmen. At night he is alone with his two Sudanese house-servants; but he is well protected—his watch-dogs sit round his hut and nothing human would dare venture near them after dark."
Margaret tried to laugh. "Dogs!" she said. "Dogs couldn't keep off this"—she indicated the valley.
Michael knew what she meant. Not a green blade of grass, not the smallest patch of herb was visible. To Margaret they seemed to be floating rather than riding through the pink light of another world.
"No, not this," Michael said. "But your brother's a marvel. I couldn't do it. Yet even he has to leave it now and then; sometimes he spends a night in frivolling in Luxor or Assuan."
As the vision of Luxor hotels, with their company of fashionably-clothed and overfed tourists, rose up before the girl, she laughed more naturally. But in the valley her laughter sounded wrong; she quickly hushed it.
"Fancy Luxor hotels after this! It certainly is going to extremes—personally, their society would bore me, but I should think that it was good for Freddy."