When the letter was posted, and could not be retrieved, Meg went into the coffee-room and tried to soothe her soul with material comforts. An excellent cup of coffee made a good beginning. The letter settling her fate was in the post-office; she was going home to England in a few days. She was trying to swallow the hard facts with each mouthful which she drank.
What a contrast her leaving Egypt would be to her arrival in the country! How flattened out and disillusioned she would feel! What an ordinary, everyday ending to her vivid romance in the Valley! When she thought of the little hut, almost hidden in one of the many wrinkles of the hills, she smiled. Her senses glowed; she visualized the arid scene, suddenly transformed into an Eden with Love's passion-flowers. No garden in paradise could suggest to a Moslem mind diviner voices or greater radiance. Cairo, with its confusion of sounds and its medley of human races, was empty and meaningless; it was wiped out. She was once more in the Valley, where life was vital and human.
After a little time of happy dreaming, the bitter fact came back to her, like a cold wind disturbing a summer's heat, that she had actually written to her brother promising him that she would go home. What would Hadassah think? What did her own conscience say?
Yet only one hour ago she had felt convinced that she was doing her duty, that her honour and womanly pride demanded that she should keep her promise. She had nerved herself against a thousand inner voices to obey her brother. She blushed for shame. In writing the letter she had practically admitted Michael's unfaithfulness as a lover. How could she have allowed herself to be so devastated by jealousy, have allowed her mind to be so concentrated on the unlovely side of the story? Even Hadassah Ireton had scorned it, while she, "the mistress of Mike's happiness," had doubted and despaired!
Poor Margaret! If she had been less human, her Valley of Eden had held no flowers. The desert had been a wilderness indeed.
* * * * * *
The psychic and devotional side of her lover's nature engrossed her thoughts. She recalled to her mind all that he had taught and explained to her about the views and religion of the tragic Pharaoh, the world's first conscientious objector.
Since she had heard of the scandal, she had scarcely thought of the occult and psychic side of the journey. Her attitude had been self-engrossed and materialistic.
She sighed. How difficult it was to drive self out of one's thoughts, for was there anything as interesting in the whole of the wonderful world as one's self, one's miserably unworthy, puny self?
Hadassah had truly said, "We have two selves . . . what armed enemies they are!" Surely she, Margaret, had more than two selves? It seemed to her that she had a hundred, for every hour of the day and year.