Margaret gave her promise willingly. Michael's reason seemed to her such a justifiable one that their secret might be kept even from Freddy.
Presently Freddy shouted out, "I'm off to bed, Meg—kick Mike out and go to yours—you've had a long day."
As Mike said good-night, Margaret noticed how strained and grave he was. "Don't look so serious!" She tried to speak lightly. "To-morrow we shall both say that it was all a dream. Fancy an Egyptian Pharaoh rising out of his tomb below the hills to speak to me! I'm not going to think of it any more—I'll send myself to sleep by trying to say the Arabic alphabet backwards."
Michael did not look any the less grave. "He was brought to the valley," he said, "to his mother's tomb, and I don't suppose that I am the first person to receive a message from him—perhaps the first European, but then, I love his teachings. They have not been known very long."
"He said he had come to see what his people were doing. Do you really think he has given this message to others?"
"Why not?—in another manner. These holy men in Egypt who feel compelled to give up their lives to preaching and praying, and who travel from desert-town to desert-town, calling on the people to worship the one and only God—who knows what the manner of their call was, or how God came to them?"
"Then you think that God came to-night, in this valley, in the form of
Akhnaton, to you through me?"
"I certainly do. Akhnaton, like Christ, became divine. We could all be divine if we allowed ourselves to be."
"Good-night," Meg said, for Freddy was shouting again. "It's late, and I'm afraid I am too matter-of-fact and far too materialistic to follow your ideas and beliefs."
"I wish I followed what I believe," Mike said. "On a night like this you can't help believing that God is in the yellow sand and in the blue sky and in the beautiful stillness. He is in you and me and around us. The hills look very holy, don't they? But to-morrow it will be so easy to forget, to take everything for granted, or to behave as if chance had produced God's world." He held her hand for one moment longer than was necessary. "One is so closely in touch with the beauty of God here, Meg. In busy Luxor or Cairo, or in any city, material things are the things that matter. God is forgotten, set aside . . . man's ingenuity is so much more obvious."