As she asked herself the question, a picture formed itself in her mind of Daniel interpreting "the writing on the wall" to the guests at the feast of Belshazzar. She saw the hand write the three words: Numbered, weighed, divided. She saw the wonder of the King and the curiosity of his friends. God only, who sent the omen, explained it, and all which Daniel under His direction uttered, explaining it, was fulfilled.
Egypt had reconstructed in Margaret's mind the proper proportion of time as applied to the history and evolution of the world's civilization. The deeds and the victories of Cyrus, the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar, were not mythical deeds because they belonged to a mythical and lost age. In Egypt they had seemed to her legends of a comparatively late date. Darius, the Mede, to whom Biblical authority awards the succession of the kingdom of the vanquished and slain Belshazzar, was removed by almost a thousand years from the world which had known the gentle King, the youthful Pharaoh, who loved not war, and whose God was the Prince of Peace.
As compared to Michael's beloved Akhnaton Belshazzar was a mere modern. Almost one thousand years before the impious King had reigned over Babylon Akhnaton had told the Egyptian people of the unspeakable goodness and loving-kindness of God, he had preached a religion which was to abolish all wars, which was to unite all nations under the banner of universal brotherhood.
The Biblical handwriting on the wall had come into her thoughts for a good purpose. The vision of it had been sent to prove to her that such things had happened in the world before, and that there was no reason to believe that they had not often happened since. God works in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.
Her fight against her desire to believe had been solely on Freddy's account. He had so intensely disliked her interest in occultism that for his sake she had struggled faithfully to subdue it. Now she knew that she could no longer ignore the influence which had entered into her life in this strange manner, not understood by her material self. She possessed powers and qualities which with all her heart she wished that she did not possess. She dreaded this last evidence of the mysterious power which had made her very actions subservient to its will.
Yet even as she said the words she was ashamed. If the message had any connection with the figure in her vision, how could she hate it? Instantly the tragic eyes, glowing with the light of divine love, were before her; their reproach and pity made her blush, for in denying her belief in things spiritual, she was surely denying the power of the Holy Spirit in just the same way as Peter had denied and mocked at Jesus for His assumption of divinity.
Believing, with the intuition of her higher self, with her divine mind, whose reasoning powers were in heaven, like the desert child of God—for so the everyday world would say of her if they had known—in the spiritual source of the amazing message, she ceased to question the why or the wherefore of it. She could not treat it as the mere creation of her own overwrought imagination, and yet she would be true to Freddy in the sense that she would do absolutely nothing to get into closer touch with the world behind the veil. She would make no effort to develop her powers.
On that point her conscience was absolutely clear. She had been loyal and true to Freddy; she had left all occultism and mysticism severely alone. And surely never in the world had her mind been farther separated from things Egyptian or occult than on this afternoon, when she had suddenly felt her hand begin to write of its own free will? Of all people in the world, her Aunt Anna was the last who would call up any suggestion of her vision in the Valley, and Freddy would agree that a Lyons' tea-room was amazingly unsuited for such an experience.
She puzzled her brain to find out any reason why this message should have been sent to her at this particular time, why Michael had been thrust so vividly into her life again. Her pride had driven him from her mind until he had at last actually lost his place in her daily thoughts. It would be impossible now not to think of him; she was thinking of him with a beautiful rebirth of her first romantic love.
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