"What about battle and murder and sudden death?"
"I take that risk. But, honestly, dear, are you going to adopt that fanatic, take him on with you?"
"I'm going to look after him until he's better," Michael said, "if that's what you mean."
"You've got one protégé in el-Azhar. I wonder where this one will find his home?"
"He will be all right in the morning. Some food and sleep will set him on his way again." Michael's eyes expressed the fact that his thoughts had travelled to Millicent's own position in his camp. She had wished to avoid this; she had tried to obliterate her own personality. Her desire was to let Mike get pleasantly accustomed to her companionship, to her place in his camp, to her harmless presence. She felt certain that if she could manage it for a day or two, he would let things slide. It was his nature to drift.
The evening was almost at its close; night was drawing near. The evening star, with its one clear call, had appeared in the pale sky, guarded by the soft pure crescent of a new moon. The single star in the vast heavens made a tender appeal to the hearts of both Millicent and Michael. It intensified their solitude. It touched their senses with longing. If Margaret had been with Michael, his arms would have encircled her.
Millicent owed her self-restraint to her calculating common sense. To have had a lover on such a night as this would have been a splendid reward for all her trouble. In her heart she called the man at her side a fool, a pitiful fool, and herself an idiot for loving him.
"It was a beautiful idea for Mohammed's banner," Michael said at length. He had driven the thought even of Margaret from his mind. Suggestion is too potent a drug.
"Was that what he took it from?" Millicent said. "I never thought of it before—of course, it must have been."
"He must often have watched the evening star as we are watching it now, when he was a boy living in the desert. Later on, when he became the warrior prophet, he must have visualized the heavens as the background of his banner, and taken the evening star and the crescent moon as his symbols—the star and the crescent of Islam." Michael paused. "In the same way, the full rays of the sun became the symbol of Aton, Akhnaton's god and loving father."