When Meg went to bed, she slept soundly, very soundly. She must have been asleep for some hours when suddenly she awoke with unusual alertness. The intensity of her dream had wakened her. She had heard Michael's voice crying, as though it were vainly trying to reach her. It was as clear as the overseer's whistle each morning; it had wakened her just as suddenly. The anguish of his soul came to her out of the silence. Three times he had called her distinctly.
She started up, with the words "Yes, Mike, I'm coming." They were said before she realized that she was separated from him by the Valley and the river and the eastern desert.
Sitting up in bed she listened. Everything was still. She jumped out of bed and looked out of the window. The stars in the sky shone down on the hills which covered the sleeping Pharaohs as they had shone when Michael had told her that he loved her, as they had shone before the Valley became a city of the dead.
Margaret slipped on her dressing-gown and opened the door. She went quietly out and stood in front of the hut, with eyes raised to the heavens. She felt as if her heart was bursting with the prayers that filled it. What could she do? Nothing—nothing but give herself up to God, open her heart and reveal its burden to the Lord of all worlds, trust her inarticulate prayers to His everlasting mercy. Very softly she whispered, almost ashamed of her own impotence, "I want to go to Michael. Allow my spirit to console him."
Her hands were clenched. An imploring agony held her unconscious of all else but her desire to get outside herself and appear to her lover. She had no more words; speech was needless. Her wants were as infinitely beyond the limits of speech, as infinity is beyond our conception of space or time.
For a few minutes she stood lost in the one thought. And who shall say in what name her prayer was answered by the divine mercy?
Gradually a subtle untightening of her muscles relaxed her hands even while they remained folded. Something had gone out of her. Was it virtue? Unconscious of her material self, for her thoughts had not yet returned from their mission of healing, she remained standing in the same attitude of appeal.
Suddenly her imagination folded her in her lover's arms. She heard him say, "My beautiful Meg, the stars adore you!"
And she answered, "I am with you, Mike, just as I was on that night when your love made a new world for me. You called to me and so I came. Your arms are round me. . . . I can hear your voice."
Margaret sighed. Consciousness of her material surroundings was returning. She heard a step behind her; someone was present. It was Freddy.