During Michael's absence she had been down the valley and up the valley and through its hidden ways; she was familiar now with the native life in the camp and with the sights and sounds of Egypt. The flight of a falcon over the Theban hills seemed as familiar to her as the bounding of a wild rabbit on the Suffolk wolds. The desolation of the valley had now become the Spirit of Peace, the Voice of Sympathy. Her jealousy was aroused at the very thought of another woman being admitted into the privacy of the camp. Being a true woman, it gave her intense satisfaction to be the only one, to be the chosen companion of her brother and of Mike.
They were always eager for her companionship. If Freddy did not want her, Mike did; if Mike had work to do which demanded perfect solitude, she felt that Freddy was not sorry. Yet they were all three such good friends that more often than not they played together delightfully childish games. It was nevertheless rather a red-letter day for either of the two men when circumstances so arranged it that Meg had to go off with one of them alone on some excursion which combined business with pleasure.
Margaret, womanlike, loved the nicest of all feelings—"being wanted." She would have liked her life to go on for ever just as it was, her society always desired by two of the dearest men in the world and her days filled with this novel and extraordinary work.
But even in the desert, things do not stand still. If they did, temples could not have been buried and cities lost. So after dinner, when Freddy, like the dear human brother that he was, allowed Michael and Margaret to spend some considerable time alone, the high gods took in hand the affairs of these two human lives, lives which had been well content to rest on their oars and drift with the tide.
Michael had had no prearranged desire to change the conditions of their intimacy. It was beautiful. He had given no thought to himself as Margaret's lover. He had been content to be her partner in that tip-toe dance of expectation and in that state of undeclared devotion which is the life and breath of a woman's existence.
On the evening of his return to the camp he felt a new joy in Margaret's presence. Catching the sound of her voice in her coming and going about their small hut was a delicious assurance of the happiness that was to be his for some days to come. She illuminated the place and vitalized his energies. Yet this deepened pleasure told him nothing—nothing, at any rate, of what the gods had up their sleeves.
They were standing, as they had often stood before, on some high ridge of the desert cliff which overlooked its desolation and immensity. Margaret's face was star-lit; her beauty softened. As Michael gazed at her, he lost himself.
As unexpectedly to Margaret as to himself, his arms enfolded her. He told her that he loved her.
This confession of his feelings for her was so sudden, a thing so far beyond his self-control and so inevitable, that Margaret made no attempt to withstand it. The beauty of it humbled her to silence; the generosity of life and its gift to her bewildered her. Two tears rolled quickly down her cheeks. Michael saw them and loved her all the more tenderly. Absurd tears, when her heart could not contain all her happiness! Meg dived for her handkerchief. Michael captured her hands; he took his own handkerchief and dried her cheeks, while laughter, mingled with weeping, prevented her from speaking.
"I didn't mean to tell you, Meg," he said. "It just came out, as if it wasn't my own self who was speaking."