He had said good-bye with regret and gratitude to the Omdeh, who was every day becoming more concerned about the secret propaganda which was being preached in the desert mosques, and had travelled as quickly as he could, more by train than by camel, back to Luxor. On an afternoon of blistering heat he had crossed the Nile and ridden over the plain of Thebes. He had to rest for a little time under the cliffs which shelter the great temple of Hatshepsu at Der-el-Bahari, before he continued his journey up the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, to the hut in the wrinkles of the hills.
As he rode through the Valley, his thoughts were full of his first meeting with Margaret. He remembered how at a certain point of the desolate track, which winds like a dry river-bed through the Theban hills, she had said, "Does Freddy live here all alone?" and how, when he had assured her that Freddy was well guarded by watch-dogs at night, she had said. "But dogs couldn't keep off this!" For Margaret they had not kept off "this," the spirit of Egypt; nothing can keep off Egypt; its power and mystery defy both time and science.
He remembered her almost childish eagerness, when she first listened to his explanation of Akhnaton's beliefs and teachings. Then her vision of the suffering Pharaoh came back to him, and all her arguments against her super-sense, which told her that she had seen the spirit of the first divinely-inspired man. He visualized her honest eyes and their expression of interest when he had argued with her that God had revealed Himself to mankind in many individuals and in many countries. Surely she could not believe that God had left a single nation without some revelation of Himself, that he had not sent upon all nations the gift of His Spirit by some redeemer?
Margaret had said. "You mean, don't you, that Christ revealed Himself to all nations?"
Michael had rejected her correction, for Christ was but one of God's manifestations of Himself upon earth. There have been others—Buddha was one, so was Mohammed; all great reformers, and those who are inspired with the spirit of truth, and seek to reveal its beauty to mankind, were to Michael God's revelations of Himself upon earth. He gave to China, Confucius, to India, Krishna, and so on. To Palestine he gave Jesus, Whose teachings have lightened the darkness of the Western world.
"You may call them all Christ or Jesus, if you like," he had said. "For they are all imbued with the same Spirit, which is of God. Jesus has become our ideal and example, He it is Whom God chose to teach a doctrine suited to Western minds."
In the heat and stillness of the Valley Michael pondered in his heart over all the arguments and discussions which he had had with Margaret under the star-lit heavens, or in an expanse of blinding sunlight, which left not a shadow as big as a man's hand on the golden sands of the Sahara.
He was living again in the days which preceded his adventures in the Libyan Desert. Abdul was conscious of his master's total absorption in the thoughts which his return to the Valley had called up. For many weeks the heat of the summer sun had made the Valley like a furnace; even now, though the hottest hours of the day were past, it was stifling and almost unendurable. The air scorched Michael's face like the hot air which comes from an oven when its door is opened.
As they drew near to the hut which had once been his home, the loneliness and desolation became more intense. It hurt Michael indescribably; the contrast between the present and the past was horrible. What he had looked upon as his home, and what had meant for him so much activity of mind and body, was now a mere wilderness. It was an inferno of heat and sandhills; even lizards and scorpions sought the shade. Nothing but the dead Pharaohs under the hills remained to tell him that this had been his Eden, where passion-flowers bloomed.
The wooden hut was bolted and barred and closely shuttered.