Meg blinked her eyes to rid them of their confusion; her fingers had been tightly pressed against them. She looked fixedly into the space in front of her. Nothing was there; the room was just as it had been when she closed her eyes. The disordered table, the cigarette-ash in the two saucers, the crumbs from a Huntley and Palmer's cake on the table-cloth—these homely things struck her as incongruous. She had expected a vision of Akhnaton; she had hoped for it.
She put her head down on her arms again; her thoughts had been very sweet; with closed eyes they might come back again. How absurd it was to think of such material things as the silver paper round the imported cake, and to remember that Freddy had said he was sick of tinned apricot jam!
These domestic thoughts had taken but a second. She was going back to her vision and to the happiness it had given her.
And so it came to pass that just as Michael had found solace for heart and mind in the dancing of the daffodils which he had visualized in the eastern desert, so Meg's bruised heart lost its sense of fear in her visualizing of the world's first reformer.
* * * * * *
When Freddy returned to the sitting-room, refreshed and invigorated, he woke his sister by his noisy entrance. He was extremely angry with himself, and showed his sorrow very tenderly.
Meg looked at him with half-awakened senses. Where was she? What was she doing? What hour of the day was it?
"Never mind, Freddy, I've slept long enough." She smiled, and looked as though the thoughts from which she drew her happiness were far away.
Freddy put his two hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes. "Were your dreams very nice, old girl? You look as if you'd been playing on the Elysian plain, or had been re-born!"
Meg pulled-her brother's face down to the level of her own and whispered, "Heavenly, Freddy, heavenly!"