E-text prepared by Al Haines

THERE WAS A KING IN EGYPT

by

NORMA LORIMER

Author of
"Catherine Sterling,"
"By the Waters of Germany,"
"By the Waters of Sicily,"
"The Second Woman,"
"The Gods' Carnival,"
"A Wife Out of Egypt"
"On Desert Altars,"
"On Etna," Etc. Etc.

London Stanley Paul & Co 31 Essex Street, Strand, W.C.2

First published in 1918

PREFACE

The monarch indicated in There was a King in Egypt is Akhnaton, the heretic Pharaoh, first brought home to the English reader by the well known Egyptian archaeologist, Mr. Arthur Weigall. Akhnaton, or Amenhotep IV., has an interest for the whole world as the first Messiah. Like Our Lord, he was of Syrian parentage—on the mother's side. Interest in him is undying, because underlying his Sun-symbolism we have the first foreshadowings of the altruism of Christianity.

The book is not directly devoted to Akhnaton. It is about a young English Egyptologist, who is excavating the tomb of Akhnaton's mother, in which the Pharaoh's exhumed body found its final repose; his sister; and an Irish mystic, who copies the tomb-paintings excavated before their freshness fades. Aton-worship and Mohammedanism have an almost equal fascination for this Irishman, and the romance is permeated with their mysticism. The prophecies of a Mohammedan saint who has attained the light by a life of abstinence and self-discipline, influence the current of the romance no less than the visions of the Pharaoh Messiah, whose pure religion threatened his country with disasters like the Russian revolution.

For the historical facts I am indebted to the brilliant Akhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt,[1] of Mr. Weigall, late Chief Inspector of Monuments in Upper Egypt. The character of the Egyptian Messiah has fascinated me ever since I began to read Egyptian history, and Mr. Weigall writes with the grace and colour of a Pierre Loti. I have always used his translations of Akhnaton's words, and very often his own words in describing Akhnaton.

I take this opportunity of thanking Mr. Weigall for his ungrudging permission to quote from him, and I should like him to know that his book was the inspiration of There was a King in Egypt.

I must also acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. Walter Tyndall's fine volume, Below the Cataracts,[2]—he is equally successful as author and artist—for my description of the tomb of Queen Thiy.

The teachings of the reformed Mohammedanism scattered through my book are derived from the propaganda works of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, especially his Teachings of Islam.[3]

I trust that my readers will find the mysticism of the book not a clog upon the wheels of the romance of Excavation in Egypt, but Virgil's "vital breeze."

NORMA LORIMER. 7, PITCULLEN TERRACE, PERTH, SCOTLAND.

[1] Published by Wm. Blackwood & Sons.

[2] Published by Heinemann.

[3] Published by Dulau.

THERE WAS A KING IN EGYPT

PART I

CHAPTER I

Dawn held the world in stillness. In the vast stretches of barren hills and soft sands there was nothing living or stirring but the figure of an Englishman, standing at the door of his tent.

At the hour of sunrise and sunset the East is its own. Every suggestion of Western influence and foreign invasion is wiped out. The going and the coming of the sun throws the land of the Pharaohs, the kingdom of Ra, the great Sun God, whose cradle was at Heliopolis, back to the days when Egypt was the world; to the days when the sun governed the religion of her people; to the days when civilization had barely touched the Mediterranean and the world knew not Rome; back again to the days when the Nile, the Mother of Life, bordered by bands of fertile, food-giving land, had not as yet sheltered the infant Moses in her reeds. Dawn in Egypt is the dawn of civilization.

Each dawn saw Michael Amory, wrapped in his thickest coat, standing outside his tent, watching and waiting for the glory of Egypt, for Ra, the Sun God, to appear above the horizon of the desert.

To stand alone, nerve-tense and oppressed by the soundless sands, and surrounded by the Theban Hills, in whose bosoms lie the eternal remains of the world's first kings, drew him so strongly that, tired as he might be with his previous day's work, he seldom slept later than the hour which links us with the day that is past and the morrow which holds the magic of the future.

For that half-hour only his higher self was conscious of existence, and it was infinitely nearer to God than he was aware of. The silence of the desert and its simplicity, which to the complex mind of Western man is so mysterious, banished all material thoughts and even the consciousness of his own body, and left him a naked soul, alone in the world, encompassed with Divinity, a world whose hills and rolling sands had known neither labour nor strife, nor the despotism of kings.

For the dead Pharaohs, lying in their tombs under the hills, in the grandest monuments ever wrought by the vanity of man, were forgotten. His long days of labour in their depths might never have been. Man and his place in the universe were wiped out.

The cold was intense. Michael shivered and turned up the collar of his coat. A faint light had appeared on the horizon, a pale streak like a silver thread, which widened and widened until it spread into the higher heavens; with its spreading the indefinite forms of moving figures appeared—ghostly figures of dawn.

Michael knew that they would appear; he knew that, just as soon as the streak of light grew in width from a faint thread to a wider band, he would see them, dignified, stately figures, like white-robed priests, walking desertwards from the horizon to his tent.

Although he had seen the same figures every morning for some months, he was not tired of watching them. It always gave him pleasure to recall how vividly they had at first reminded him of the pictures, familiar to him as a boy, of the Wise Men following the star in the east. But these were not wise men coming to pay homage or bring presents to the Galilean Babe who came to be called the Prince of Peace; they were the Mohammedan workmen who were employed by the Exploration School to which Michael Amory had attached himself; their labour was confined to the rougher preliminary digging and the clearing away of the accumulation of sand and debris on sites which had been selected for excavation.

As the dawn slipped back and counted itself with the years that are spent and the first yellow gleam appeared in the sky, Michael saw the tall figures go down on their knees and press their foreheads to the sand. It was their third prayer of the day: devout Mohammedans begin their new day at sunset; their second prayer is at nightfall, when it is quite dark; their third is at daybreak.

Michael knew that the moment el isfirar, or the first yellow glow, appeared in the heavens, the white figures would turn to the east and perform their subh, or daybreak devotion. He knew that it would be finished before the golden globe appeared above the rim of the desert, for did not the Prophet counsel his people not to pray exactly at sunrise or sunset or at noon, because they might be confounded with the infidels who worshipped the sun? Yet it gave him a fresh thrill each morning to watch these desert worshippers prostrate themselves in undoubting faith before their omnipotent God. In the untrodden desert, with its mingling of sky and sand, their perfect trust and faith in Allah seemed a convincing and evident belief. At such times he forgot that these same men were the children of Superstition and that one and all of them were held in the bondage of genii. He also forgot that their performance of five prayers a day, which is the number prescribed for the devout, did not necessarily make them men of honour. A perfect trust in Allah gives a bad man a long rope.

As the figures drew nearer and the golden globe rested for one moment on the sands of the desert, for that one brief moment before its rays broke into the amazing splendour which is Egypt's, the world became less mysterious, more familiar. Things relating to the day's work forced themselves upon Michael's mind. His bath and breakfast and many other practical things began to usurp his thoughts, while the barking of dogs, the movement in the hut of the "boys," brought him back to the common, everyday life of the excavating camp.

While he was dressing he remembered that Freddy Lampton's sister was to arrive that day. For a moment or two his mind was completely usurped with a vision of what the girl would be like. Subconsciously his manhood quickened.

Yet the very idea of a woman intruding herself upon their strange and exquisitely-intellectual life—a life made healthy by the long hours of physical labour in the various portions of the excavation—slightly annoyed him.

Fleeting pictures of Lampton as a girl rose and faded before his eyes as he hurriedly shaved himself, slipped into his flannels and adjusted his necktie as punctiliously as though he were going to a tennis-party at Mena House Hotel. It is typical of Englishmen in the East that the young men in the excavating camps, and especially in the one to which Michael belonged, showed as much regard for their personal appearance and nicety of dress, even when their day's work was to be done in the bowels of the earth, down a shaft as deep as a mine, as they did in the golden days of their life at Oxford or Cambridge. Michael Amory was perhaps as a rule the least careful of the digging party, because he was by temperament a dreamer; and his friend, Freddy Lampton, knew that if he was not careful and on his guard he would become "a slacker." Freddy, in spite of his acknowledged ability as a scholar and Egyptologist, was practical and conventional in his methods and mode of living. Michael Amory had fits of exactness and fits of what he considered conventionality; he had also his fits of slackness, days in which Freddy Lampton would let his blue eyes rest on his carelessly-tied necktie, or on his shoelaces, which were an offence to his eyes. Freddy's exquisite delicacy of touch and his eyes, which were trained to a fine pitch of exactitude for minute detail, two characteristics essential for his work as an excavator, made it painful for him to be in the company of anyone who offended his sense of personal nicety.

But visions of Lampton's sister were to be dismissed. She would be good-looking, of course, because Freddy's sister could scarcely be anything else; his blue eyes, clear colouring and sunlit hair would be beautiful in a girl. But Michael Amory had no desire to encourage any thoughts which gave woman a place in his mind. The very visualizing of Lampton as a girl, comical as it had been, had forced before his eyes another face and another form which he had been striving to forget. Whenever he was idle, and too often when he was busy over some piece of work which ought to have engrossed his entire thoughts, her haunting charm and beauty would suddenly become more real and vivid than the bright blues and greens and reds of the pigments on the white walls of the tomb upon which he was at work. With well-practised mind-control he had learned to pull down a blind on her vision, to blot it out from his thoughts. On this morning, when he was hurrying through his dressing so as to be in time for breakfast, always a matter of difficulty with him, even though he had many hours in which to put on his few clothes, he shrank from thinking about the arrival of the girl who was coming to live with her brother in this strange valley, which had been the underground cemetery for countless centuries of the tomb-builders of Egypt.

When he was almost dressed and the sun was high in the heavens and its power was beginning to warm the night-chilled valley, a stone was flung into his tent. "Come out, you lazy beggar! The coffee's getting cold."

It was Lampton's voice and Lampton's nicety of aim. He had not been up since dawn; his boy had only brought him his cup of early tea half an hour ago, yet he was bathed and shaved and as neatly dressed as the most fastidious woman could desire.

"Right-ho!" Michael shouted back. "Don't wait for me."

"I should jolly well think I won't! Who'd be such an ass?" There was the best of human fellowship in Freddy's voice, but he knew his friend too well to risk the chance of spoiling his coffee by waiting for him.

After stretching out his arms and opening his lungs to the fresh dry air of the newborn day, Freddy turned into the dining-room. The mess-room and common sitting-room of the camp was in a wooden hut. Lampton's bedroom was at the back of it, as was also the one which had been set apart for his sister; it by right belonged to the Overseer-General and Controller of the Excavations and Monuments of Upper Egypt. Margaret Lampton was to use it and her brother was to evacuate his room when the overseer announced that he was coming to pay one of his visits of inspection to the camp.

Michael Amory lived in a tent, as did one or two other Englishmen who in busy and prosperous years helped in the work of excavating. At the present moment they were slack, which meant that funds were low and there was no fine work to be done which necessitated the individual spade and pick work of European Egyptologists. A new site was being cleared, so that the work had consisted for some time of the first clearing away of sand and stones and the debris which had collected during the thousands of years that had passed since the tomb which Freddy hoped to discover had been carved in the bowels of the earth, and the Pharaoh had been laid to rest in it. At such times there was little work for experts to do, so the camp shrank and left Lampton, who was the head of it, and one of England's finest Egyptologists, alone with his native workmen.

He had allowed his old Oxford chum, Michael Amory, to join him on condition that he put in so many hours' work every day in connection with the excavations. Michael's stipulated work, the work which he had undertaken to do, was the making of exact copies of the mural paintings and decorations, such as Lampton required, and to help in the evenings to clean and sort and arrange the small objects which the workmen found each day. In the debris they often found amulets and small earthenware vases and minute pieces of broken pottery, the very smallest of which suggested theories as regards the period and history of the monument. The texture of the glaze used, or the nature of the pottery itself, the small remnant of decoration on them, or the trademark on the broken base of a vase, all were valuable links in the chain of history which is unfolding itself to the eager eyes of Egyptian exploration schools.

When Michael at last appeared, Freddy looked up from his bacon and eggs. "I say, Margaret comes to-night."

"Yes, I know."

Freddy raised his blue eyes and gave Michael one of his quick glances.
"Remembered, did you?"

"Yes—the fact suddenly came into my head when I was shaving. I say, what are you going to do with her? Won't she be awfully bored?"

"Margaret doesn't know what the word bored means. Give her enough freedom and lots of sunshine—that's all she wants."

"Sounds the right sort."'

"One of the best—old Margaret's all right!"

"Is she like you in appearance?"

"Good Lord, no!"

Michael's enthusiasm was damped. He wanted her to be like Freddy, to have his short, straight nose and his strong rounded chin and beautiful mouth. For his looks were wasted on a man; Michael wanted to see them repeated and softened in a girl. As his eyes rested contemplatingly on his companion's bent head and youthfully-lean figure, he began to visualize a very plain, dowdy sister. The "Good Lord, no!" probably meant that although Freddy was not the least vain of his own extraordinary good looks, he could not help exclaiming at the idea of his dowdy sister being considered like him.

Michael had never seen her, because Freddy and Margaret had been left orphans when they were little children. They had been adopted by different relatives, so that Michael had never had the opportunity of meeting his friend's sister while they were together at Oxford or when he visited Freddy in his uncle's home.

"Pass the marmalade!" said Freddy. "And I say, old chap, I wish you'd go and meet Margaret!"

Their eyes met as Michael handed him the marmalade, which was the one thing in the world which Lampton said he could not live without.

"Meet your sister?" Michael said. "I will, if you can't, but where?—and won't she expect you?"

"She ought to be on the ferry at five o'clock—I've made all the other arrangements, but I do wish you would meet her there and bring her up the valley. I simply can't, and Margaret knows that she is only allowed to come here on condition that her visit makes no earthly difference to my work. I daren't leave the men alone to-day—there's too much lying about. We are getting pretty 'hot' and they know it."

Michael looked up eagerly. "By Jove, is that so?"

"Getting hot" was expressive of getting close to a find. It was the old saying which they had used as children when they played hide-and-seek.

"Yes, I think we are on the right track and I want to get ahead, so if you will go down to the ferry and fetch her up here I'll be awfully obliged to you."

"Right you are, old chap. I'll be there at five o'clock, and if she's not punctual I'll do a bit of sketching. You're sure everything else will be all right?"

"I don't think she'll be late, because she is to be in Luxor by eleven o'clock. She is to rest there until it gets cooler and Abdul is to bring her over the river from the hotel. The donkeys will be at the ferry to meet her. Mohammed is very anxious for her to ride his camel" (Mohammed was the sheikh of the district); "he thinks it more proper and fitting for my sister to make her entry into his district on a camel, but I don't feel certain that Margaret would appreciate the honour. He is keen to 'do her proud.'"

"Good old Mohammed!" Michael said. "He has a great sense of dignity and convention."

"And of hospitality," Lampton said. "He never forgets that as the sheikh of the district he is its host as well."

That was all that was said about Margaret's arrival. The two men lapsed into silence until breakfast was over. If they had been two women discussing the coming of a man in their midst, there might have been more to say on the subject. In silence Freddy lit his cigarette and wandered into Margaret's room. It was as bare and plainly furnished as a convent cell or a room in a small log-hut in a frontier-camp in Canada—just the necessary bed and table, a washstand and one chair. It was scrupulously clean, and the white mosquito-curtain, which was suspended from the roof and dropped over the little iron bed like a bride's veil, gave the room a pleasant virginal atmosphere.

Freddy came back to the sitting-room, evidently satisfied. His quick eye had noticed that the "boy" had carried out his orders.

"Meg's an awful girl for books," he said, as he carried off a bundle of yellow-paper-bound French novels and one or two volumes of the Temple Classics to her room.

"She'd better begin on this," he said, as he returned in search of still more. "She can't do better"—he lifted up the weighty tome of Maspero's Dawn of Civilization.

"A bit dry, isn't it, for a beginner?"

"Not for Meg," Freddy said. "She can tackle pretty stiff stuff. At college she used to suck the guts out of a book like a weasel sucking blood from a rabbit."

"Blue stocking!" Michael said to himself. He abhorred the type of ardent, eager, studious woman with whom he had come in contact during his university life. "Able and abominable" he called them.

In less than ten minutes the two companions had separated; the one, with his paint-box and camp-stool in his hand, made his way to the tomb where he was copying with delicate and extraordinary exactitude the exquisite figures and heads painted on the walls and pillars of the vast building; the other directed his steps to the site where the band of native excavators was already at work.

What a strange sight it presented in the brilliant morning sunshine! To the untutored eye nothing more or less than a vast rubbish-heap of sand and stones and broken rocks, with here and there patches of sparsely-clad natives working away with pickaxes and the tall figure of a white-robed gaphir, standing on a hillock of sand, watching them with unremitting care. On the sides of the vast ashpits long lines of "boys," toiling like ants up steep inclines, were carrying rush-baskets full of rubbish on their shoulders.

Yet these ignorant fellahin were playing their part, and an indispensable one, in laying bare to modern eyes the history of the world's first civilization. This vast rubbish-heap, where men with pickaxes and boys with baskets, full of the dust and sand of ages, toiled from dawn until sunset, would in the course of time yield perhaps to the Egyptologist one of the long-looked-for links in the lost centuries of Egypt's story, or be transformed into a wonderful picture-gallery of Egyptian art.

Nothing could look less inviting, less interesting, as Freddy approached it, for as yet there was little or nothing for the untutored eye to see but the debris of familiar desert rubbish. But Freddy Lampton knew otherwise. Only yesterday the most experienced of the workmen had struck something hard, something which told him that they had finished with loose sand and broken rocks and had struck the ancient handiwork of man.

The site chosen had been a mere conjecture on Freddy Lampton's part, a conjecture guided by scientific knowledge and careful research. He felt convinced that the tomb which they were looking for was close to the spot where they were working. Indications such as the excavator looks for had decided him to begin work on the site. The discovery yesterday had been nothing more or less than the first indication of a narrow flight of steps, cut in the virgin desert rock, a stairway probably built by the tomb-builders for the use of the workmen, in order to carry away baskets of sand and rubbish without slipping.

The moment that the expert workman had come across this staircase, they had suspended work until "Effendi" had been sent for and found. Under his eye and partly by his own pickaxe, the little flight of embryo steps, with a very steep gradient, had been laid bare. In the vast expanse which the work covered, it seemed a very small thing, but the greatest underground temples—for the tombs are veritable temples—of Egypt, and some of the most wonderful of her monuments, have been discovered by far fainter clues. The little staircase, about twenty feet below the surface of the sand, was enough to fill the young Englishman's heart with hope. He had come upon man's handiwork—no doubt they would soon come upon more important masonry.

When all the workmen had saluted the Effendi with respectful salaams and returned to their common toil, Freddy Lampton addressed the native overseer. He was enveloped in a white woollen hooded cloak, for the heat of the day had not yet begun; he also wore a fine turban; while the fellahin who did the roughest work wore only white skull-caps and cotton drawers to their knees and full shirts of blue or white cotton, open from the neck to the waist. A few of the better-paid older men wore turbans of cheap white muslin, wrapped round brown felt skull-caps, or fezes. The carriers of rubbish, who received the smallest pay of any, dispensed with the drawers as well as with the turban. In the sunlight their one garment, a blue or white shirt, stood out against the yellow sand as they wound their way in Indian file from the low level of the excavation to the place in the desert where they threw down their burdens.

The gaphir led his master a few steps from where the staircase had been excavated the day before and then bade him look own. Freddy's quick eye detected a horizontal line of masonry, the beginning of a strongly-built wall. The men had earthed it that morning, it was only a narrow strip, but it would have been against the strictest rules to have excavated more without informing the "Effendi."

The gaphir, a splendid man and very reliable, adored his enthusiastic English master, whose good looks and well-bred, unfailing courtesy of speech alone would have made his personality irresistible to the Arab. Added to his good looks and to his manner of "one who is born to be obeyed," Freddy had courage and great ability and—best of all in the gaphir's eyes—a silent respect for the teachings of the Prophet.

After an inspection of the various points of excavation and a word of greeting here and there had been passed with upper workmen, those who had showed an intelligent interest in their work, Freddy returned to the exciting spot and with two or three men who had "fingers" and a "sense" of things, began his morning's picking.

While he worked away with youthful energy and an almost inspired intelligence, he could hear the toilers with the rubbish-baskets singing their monotonous chants. The word "Allah, Allah" came repeatedly to his ears. He had grown so accustomed to the words of their chants that he followed them subconsciously; the words "Allah, Lord of Kindness, Giver of Ease," rang out with monotonous persistence. Allah was to ease their burdens; Allah was to moisten their dry lips; the "Lord of the Worlds" was to hasten the time when the poor man might sit in the shade and smell the sweet scents of paradise and listen to the sound of running waters.

They chanted verses from the Koran as Jack Tars sing sea songs. In
Mohammedan lands the song of Allah never dies.

Only occasionally Freddy heard the quaint words of some popular love-song, coming from the lips of one of the higher-class Arab workmen, a song as old as their tales of The Thousand and One Nights. One was drifting to his half-conscious ears at the moment; he was familiar with every word of it.

"A lover says to his dove, 'Send me your wings for a day.' The dove replied, 'The affair is vain.' I said, 'Some other day, that I may soar through the sky and see the face of the beloved; I shall obtain love enough for a year and will return, O dove, in a day.' The night! The night! O those sweet hands! Gather of the dewy peach! Whence were ye, and whence were we, when ye ensnared us?"

The Arab who was singing it was considered quite a musician amongst his fellow-workmen. He had earned his living for some years by singing love-songs on the small boats which drift up and down the Nile and in the cafés in Luxor. To English ears his talents as a singer would not have been recognized; the particular qualities which ensured the approval of his native audience would have caused much laughter in an English music-hall. Freddy Lampton, who knew something of Arab music, was able to recognize the singer's talents, but he was not near enough to hear the grunts of intense satisfaction and longing which the song was calling forth from the blue-shirted fellahin.

And so the hours of the morning wore on, until the sun was too powerful to allow even the natives to work, and Freddy Lampton wandered off to the tomb in which his friend was painting. The fellahin instantly untied the bundles which held their simple food and began their midday meal. Many of them prayed before eating; many of them did not.

When the meal was eaten, each man sought some vestige of shade, behind a mound of rock or an ash-heap of debris, or in the excavated channels of the site; there with full stomach and contented mind he would lay himself down to sleep, amid the heap of ruins which thousands of years ago had been the field of vast numbers of toilers, such as were he and his fellow-toilers, slaving for the glorification of an absolute monarch, whose kingdom was the civilized world. He cared not one jot nor tittle for what he had uncovered or what secrets the valley or hills had hidden from men for countless centuries. Filling baskets full of rubbish was his work, his method of earning a living, and it mattered nothing to him whether the rubbish was culled from the golden sand of the most wonderful valley in the world, or thrown out of the filthy ashbins in the native city of Cairo. Toil was all one thing to him; it had no interest, it suggested no varieties. Allah had willed it. The clear blue sky and the sunlit hills, with their tombs and tombs and endless tombs stretching further and further into the western valley, they, too, were Allah's will, as were the dark, evil-smelling streets of the city, with their noise and the crowding of human and animal beasts of burden.

As Freddy approached Michael Amory a look of satisfaction spread over his face. "Mike," as he called him, was so busily engrossed in his work that he did not look up. He was making a delicate and extraordinarily exact reproduction on paper of a figure of an Egyptian King making offerings to an enthroned Osiris. No other artist had ever done the same work with his delicacy of touch and exactness of detail. The picture on his easel looked as if he had cut a square block out of the polished limestone which held the tinted relief of the King making the offering to the god, and set it upon his easel.

Freddy was proud of Michael and not a little surprised at the rapidity with which he had grasped the nature of his excavation work, which was not only the opening up of fresh monuments for the pleasure of the public, but the search after missing links and the verifying of well-founded conjectures. He knew that Michael had read a fair amount of Egyptian history, that he had specialized in one period, and that he had studied, in his own fashion, something of the mythology of ancient Egypt, but he was quite unprepared for the "sense" of the more serious part of the work which he had shown.

Besides which, Freddy knew more than Michael thought he did of the new distraction which had disturbed his mind.

About once in ten days Freddy found it almost necessary to go to Assuan or Luxor and there throw himself heart and soul into the festivities of the foreign hotel society. For one night and half a day he played tennis and danced and was young again. These periodical outings and his private hobbies kept his mind and nerves well balanced. At his age it was scarcely healthy for a sport-loving, normal Englishman to spend his days and nights all alone, in the silent valley in the hills, his only companions the mummies of Pharaohs and the bones unearthed from subterranean tombs. But Freddy slept as happily and as soundly with mummies in his room and ancient skulls below his bed as he did in the modern, conventional bedroom of the big hotel at Assuan.

Michael had accompanied him to these dances, and Freddy had noticed that on each occasion he was very much engrossed by the company of an Englishwoman of whom he had heard a good deal that was ugly and unpleasant. He had long ago ceased to pay any attention to the scandals which were related to him each season about the English and American women who came to Egypt for the sake of the climate and for its hotel-society—ugly stories, generally greatly exaggerated, but often with a foundation of unsavoury truth in them. The sands of Egypt breed scandals as quickly as the climate degenerates the morals of shallow-minded tourists. But this woman Freddy knew to be as dangerous as she was charming; and he also knew the enthusiastic nature of Michael and how it was temperamental with him to place all women on pedestals and worship them as pure, high beings, far above mere men. Fallen idols never shattered his belief; they were simply forgotten.

Since Michael had met the beautiful Mrs. Mervill, Freddy had noticed that he had fits of abstraction, and that instead of working overtime, as was his habit, he was now as prompt as the fellahin to "down tools" at the precise moment.

Freddy "had no use" for the woman. His practical mind had summed her up at a glance. But he was afraid that his friend might drift into a very undesirable friendship with her. She would enjoy his simplicity, for he seemed to have been born without guile, while his intellectual fascination was not to be denied. Michael was generous, impetuous and reckless.

"I'm not going to disturb you," Freddy said. "We'll meet at lunch."

"Right-ho!" Michael said. "I've almost finished."

"Looks as if you'd blown the thing on to the paper this time," Freddy said. "Gad, it's topping!"

Michael said nothing, but he glowed inwardly. A word of enthusiastic praise from Freddy was worth all his morning's toil in the breathless, stuffy tomb-chamber of the Pharaoh whose embalmed remains it contained.

Freddy returned to his hut and flung himself down in a cane lounge-chair in as cool a spot as he could find. He picked up a French novel and lit a cigarette.

Lying there, in his white flannels, reading Marie Claire, who would have thought that he was one of the most able Egyptologists of the day, of the younger school, or that he controlled so important a section of the English School of Archaeology in Egypt?

Meanwhile the simple meal was being laid with a neatness and convention which was a striking contrast to the wooden hut and scarcity of furniture in the room. The Arab who was setting the table was a perfect parlourmaid, a product of Freddy's teaching. The only thing Freddy was proud of was his ability to train and make good servants. Mohammed Ali's table-waiting really pleased him. He thought Meg would approve of him. He was an intelligent lad and proud of his English master, who seemed to think that telling a lie for the sake of being polite or kind was really a sin. In fact, the Effendi was very rarely cross, except when Mohammed forgot and told a lie. Sometimes it was very hard to tell the truth when a lie would, he knew, make his master happy. While he set the table he felt his master's eyes were on him, even though he was reading a love story which was so beautiful that he had seen, or thought he had seen, tears in the eyes of Effendi Amory, when he was reading it the night before.

Teddy was not finding the beautiful story of the Frenchwoman go interesting as Mohammed Ali imagined. He had allowed the days to pass, with all their engrossing interest, without giving much thought to Margaret's coming or what she would do with herself, or how her presence would affect their daily life.

Now in a few hours she would be with them. This was, in fact, his last meal alone with Mike. He had never bothered about the matter because Meg was such a good sort and so jolly well able to amuse and look after herself. The days had just passed, and now she was coming, Meg, who was his best friend in the whole world, Meg who in his eyes had the mind of a boy and the sympathy of a woman.

CHAPTER II

At five o'clock Michael Amory, true to his word, was down at the ferry, awaiting the arrival of Margaret Lampton. The ferry-boat was pulling across the Nile; he would soon be able to distinguish her. In all probability no other Englishwoman would be crossing to the western bank of the river at so late an hour. Tourists who came to visit the Colossi of Memnon, whose song to the dawn never dies, or to "do" the ruins of the Hundred-Gated city of Thebes, came much earlier in the day.

While the boat was drifting slowly across, Michael's eyes rested lovingly on his surroundings. If the girl was appreciative of Nile scenery, how greatly it must be impressing her!

Boats, like white birds with big crossed wings, flew past him on the pale blue river. Heavy, flat-bottomed barges, coming up from the pottery factories, laden with jars which were to be used for the building of native houses, drifted past, with their well-stacked, squarely-built cargoes piled high like stacks of grain. One barge, with a wide brown sail, was full of fresh green melons. Across the river, on the opposite bank, bands of women, enveloped in black and walking in Indian file on the yellow sands, carrying water-jars on their heads, were wending their way to their mud villages. The gleam of their metal anklets caught the sunlight.

But the ferry-boat was drawing close to the bank; the next minute he would be able to distinguish Freddy's sister, with Abdul in attendance. The other passengers, with native politeness, were already making way for the English Sitt and her servant to go ashore.

Michael hurried forward to greet her. Margaret's blue veil hid her features until he was quite close to her.

"I'm Michael Amory, I live with your brother," Michael said. "I have come to bring you to his camp. He was too busy, or he would have been here himself—he asked me to apologize to you."

Margaret's long firm fingers gave Michael's outstretched hand a grateful grasp. Michael, whose sensibilities were very near the surface, lost nothing of the girl's meaning. A feeling of relief soothed his anxiety.

"How awfully kind of you to come!" she said. "I knew Freddy would be busy, digging up something that was once somebody, four thousand years ago."

"That's about it," Michael said. "As I could be spared and he couldn't, he asked me to look to your arrival and bring you to the camp."

Abdul had hurried on to see that the donkeys were properly harnessed and all in good order for the long ride across the plain and through the immortal valley.

"Are you excavating too?" Margaret asked.

"I'm allowed to do a little 'picking' under your brother's eyes, but my real job is painting. I'm only dabbling in archaeology as yet."

"Painting in connection with his School of Excavation?"

"Yes. Sometimes it is necessary to make almost instant copies of the excavated paintings, while the colours are fresh and the text legible."

"Isn't it all awfully interesting?" the girl asked. "I feel almost
afraid to come in amongst you, for I know literally nothing about
Egyptology. I've only once been in the Egyptian section of the British
Museum, and that's the sum total of my knowledge."

"You will have to learn. Your brother put a huge tome of Maspero's The Dawn of Civilization in your room this morning; he means you to start right away."

"Good old Freddy!" Margaret said, and as she smiled, Michael for the first time saw her likeness to her brother; it had escaped him before, because Freddy was very fair and Margaret was duskily dark. He could see that even through her blue veil. When she smiled and showed the same sharp-looking, well-formed teeth, as white as porcelain, Michael knew that if the girl had only been fair instead of dark, she would be almost the exact duplicate of her brother. But the expression of her grey-brown eyes was different; they were steadfast, calm eyes, which moved more slowly; they were softer than her brother's.

This Michael could scarcely see, screened as she was by her veil. But her firm handshake and the long unflinching gaze of her "How do you do?" told him why Freddy always spoke of his sister in tones which implied that she was as reliable as a man and a "topping pal."

They had reached the spot where the donkeys were waiting for them. Margaret's was a fine, well-bred animal, called Sappho, with a skin as smooth as a white suede glove; it stood almost as high as a mule. Her saddle, too, was a new one, and well-fitting—Freddy had seen to that. The old Sheikh, who was turbanned and robed after the manner of Moses or Aaron, was presented to her. His pale grey camel was waiting for him at a little distance from the donkeys. It looked very dignified, with its white sheepskin flung over the saddle and its fine assortment of charms. Little tufts of thick hair had been left on its thighs and at its knees and neck; the artist who had clipped it had evidently admired the fancy shaving of some resplendent French poodle.

Margaret felt oddly important and very shy. Such a cavalcade seemed to have come to meet her. Her attempt at polite rejoinders to the old Sheikh's graceful and flattering speeches of welcome had all to be passed through Abdul, and probably delivered them in a more gracious form than Margaret was capable of expressing them. Abdul was quite accustomed to the abrupt and mannerless ways of the foreigners and to their crude speech; he knew that it meant no offence nor indicated any lack of gratitude or graciousness.

The Sheikh expressed his willingness to put his camel at Margaret's disposal, but as her brother had told him that the honourable Sitt would probably prefer to ride a donkey, all he could do was to again assure her that it would bestow honour on him if she would ride it, or in the future make use of it whenever she felt disposed. That is what Margaret made out of the endless, elaborate speeches which were translated to her.

At last they were all mounted and on their way. Margaret found it very difficult to keep up any sort of conversation with her companions, for her boy, anxious to do honour to his mistress's donkey, kept Sappho well ahead of Michael Amory's mule. She had only been one week in Egypt, so everything which she passed was still an object of interest and curiosity, but fortunately almost everything explained itself to her, like the illustrations of a book of the Old Testament.

They had turned their backs on the river, with its boats and birds and beasts and drum-beating and yelling fellahin, and were now in the silence of the green plain, where the blue-shirted fellahin were working knee-deep in the new crops. The inundation was just over, and the banks of the Nile were as bright as two long velvet ribbons of emerald green.

And now they were off the plain and had passed the Temple of Kurneh and the little Coptic village, which was the last link with civilization until their long ride up the valley terminated in the Excavation Camp.

In the valley they rode side by side, for the donkey-boy's enthusiasm had distinctly abated. Margaret did not know anything about the valley, beyond the fact that it was called the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings. She had not yet "done" any tombs, as she had not come up the Nile by boat—it was cheaper and quicker for her to do the journey from Cairo to Luxor by train. So far she had not been in the hands of Cook. Freddy had told her that the money she would have to spend on the steamer she could spend better later on, and she would be more able to appreciate the tombs and temples, which most tourists see when they know too little about things Egyptian to appreciate them.

Knowing nothing of the story of the great valley, it was interesting to Michael to watch the effect it had on the girl—an extraordinary silence and its atmosphere of profound mystery. Their attempt to talk to each other soon failed, for Margaret was no good at either banter or small talk.

For the time being the valley, with its barren cliffs rising higher and higher on each side of her, and its world of soft pink light, held her. The wide cliff-bound road, which wound its way like a white thread through a maze of light and sun-pink hills, seemed to be leading her further and further into the heart of Egypt, to the very bosom of her children's ancient kingdom.

Margaret was totally ignorant of the fact that the tombs which give the valley its modern name lay in all their desolate splendour in the bowels of the earth, under the cliffs on either side of her. Her sense of the valley was not mental, it was not derived from books or a knowledge of Egypt's history.

Why it so affected her she could not imagine. It did not depress her so much as it awed her. The light on the hills was the light of happiness, and the blueness of the clear sky banished all idea of sadness which a valley called the Valley of Tombs might have suggested. Yet it did affect her so profoundly that she accepted the idea that in entering this valley of desolation she was entering on a new phase of her existence. She felt suddenly older and wiser and strangely apprehensive.

The Sheikh, on his swaying camel, riding on ahead, the donkey-boys, with their fleet limbs and blue shirts clinging to them as they ran, were becoming immortal in her memory. Years would never efface the picture. Only Michael Amory and herself, in their European clothes, had no place in it. They were intruders.

Not a bird crossed their path, not a falcon circled over the tops of the cliffs. On the Nile thousands of birds had looked black against the sunlight as they came to the great river to drink.

"Why does this valley, with its pink sunlight, make talking out of the question?" Margaret at last said. "Please forgive me if I am a very poor companion."

Michael, who had been glad that she had not spoken—he would not have liked her so well if she had—said, "Please don't feel compelled to talk. I came to help you if you needed help, not to bother you or spoil your enjoyment."

"Thank you," she said. "I simply couldn't talk. Does one enjoy
Egypt?" she asked the question pertinently.

They rode on in silence again and Michael was pleased that temperamentally she seemed to "feel" Egypt. There had been no suggestion of psychic influence in her very evident acceptance of the power of Egypt—just a simple awe, which was to Michael absolutely natural.

Presently she said, "Does my brother live all alone in this valley?"

"Practically alone, for some months in each year. I am with him just now, and in the daytime there are the workmen. At night he is alone with his two Sudanese house-servants; but he is well protected—his watch-dogs sit round his hut and nothing human would dare venture near them after dark."

Margaret tried to laugh. "Dogs!" she said. "Dogs couldn't keep off this"—she indicated the valley.

Michael knew what she meant. Not a green blade of grass, not the smallest patch of herb was visible. To Margaret they seemed to be floating rather than riding through the pink light of another world.

"No, not this," Michael said. "But your brother's a marvel. I couldn't do it. Yet even he has to leave it now and then; sometimes he spends a night in frivolling in Luxor or Assuan."

As the vision of Luxor hotels, with their company of fashionably-clothed and overfed tourists, rose up before the girl, she laughed more naturally. But in the valley her laughter sounded wrong; she quickly hushed it.

"Fancy Luxor hotels after this! It certainly is going to extremes—personally, their society would bore me, but I should think that it was good for Freddy."

"Quite necessary," Michael said. "And he's awfully popular at the dances. I often wonder what some of his partners would say if they could see him as I do, pick in hand, down in the bowels of the earth or under the blazing sun of the desert, for days and days on end! Your brother's quite wonderful."

"I'm longing to see him at work," Margaret said. "I think his life sounds most exciting and interesting."

"Don't expect too much—it is amazingly interesting, but we don't open a tomb of Queen Thi every day."

"What tomb was that? Something very special?"

"Yes, very." Michael said the words very simply, but it struck him as odd that Freddy's sister should never have even heard of the tomb of Queen Thi. "At the present time he has just unearthed a small staircase in the sand and a bit of a brick wall, which may lead to the tomb he is looking for, or they may end in nothing, for sometimes the ancient tomb-builders began to dig and work upon a tomb and eventually abandoned the site as hopeless—the sand was too soft, which meant the constant falling of sand before they struck a foundation of rock, or for some other reason—so after days and days of excavating we find that the whole thing is a fraud, just the mere beginning of a tomb which was never finished. Then other times he finds a tomb and after endless work at it—you can't imagine how much work it entails—he discovers that it was robbed of every single thing of value, probably by the sexton who was in charge of it when it was first built—all the jewels and scarabs and things had been looted; probably they were stolen only a few weeks after the mummy was laid in it."

Margaret remained silent. She was thinking and thinking, new and bewildering thoughts were rushing through her mind Before she could in the least appreciate this new life what a lot she had to learn!

"An excavator's life isn't a bed of roses—it doesn't consist picking up jewels and mummy-beads and beautiful amulets and rare scarabs and valuable parchments in every tomb which is opened. It's hard, hard work, with any amount of boring, minute detail and scientific work attached to it."

Margaret thought for a moment. To speak at all upon a subject of which she knew absolutely nothing was not in her nature.

"Shall we pass any tombs? Where are they?" She had expected to see some ruins of fallen buildings, or monuments which resembled the tombs in "The Street of Tombs" at Athens—these were familiar to her from photographs. Here there was absolutely nothing, nothing to suggest that great tombs had ever been there.

"They are below us," Michael said, "and all around us, under these pink rocks, buried like coal-mines. Where your brother is digging just now the site is rather different—it is flatter and less beautiful; it is in a small side valley. They were terribly anxious to hide themselves, poor things, to get away from robbers."

"Oh, I'm so glad I came!" Margaret said, irrelevantly, and the deep sigh she gave terminated their conversation.

Michael knew quite well the nature of her thoughts and the turbulent fight for expression which they must be causing her. No creature as sensitively attuned as he judged her to be could journey for the first time unmoved through the valley which to him summed up the word Egypt. He allowed her to ride a few paces ahead, just behind the Sheikh. The camel's arrogant head, with its supercilious gaze, towered above them. To Margaret, Michael Amory and herself were still an offence in the valley. The camel, with the high-seated, turbaned Sheikh, seemed a part of the whole. The animal, with its prehistoric loneliness of expression, the Sheikh, with his splendid deportment and benign loftiness of manner, suited the dignity of their surroundings. The camel's gaze, as its head reached up higher and higher to view some object which interested its supercilious mind, made Margaret feel very small and vulgarly modern. She was glad that she was riding a humble ass. The way the Sheikh rode his haughty animal provoked her admiration; it was to her after the manner in which the British aristocracy treat their powdered and silk-stockinged menservants.

Margaret felt more at ease on her white donkey, just as she felt more at ease with pleasant English maidservants than with pompous powdered footmen. It was a ridiculous simile, but it is the ridiculous which invades the mind in sublime moments.

While Margaret was finding pleasure in watching the camel and the Sheikh, or rather, while they were taking their place in her mind with the air and the sky and the hills and the valley, Michael was certainly enjoying himself in a more definite criticism of Freddy's sister. He remembered his friend's remark, "Oh, Meg's all right," and he knew what he meant.

Her long limbs and boyish figure delighted his artistic eye, while the white topee hat, with the long blue veil, failed to hide the attractive carriage of her head. He felt impatient to see her unhatted and unveiled. Certainly she was not dowdy, nor had she any aggressive cleverness about her. Indeed, there was something which suggested a man's directness of mind and a simplicity which was quite unusual and fascinating. He could almost have laughed aloud when he thought of the picture which he had conjured up to himself of the Meg who could "tackle pretty stiff stuff and suck the guts out of a book like a weasel sucking the blood out of a rabbit."

The dowdy "blue stocking" had vanished, and in her place was a girl as attractive in her darkness as Freddy was in his fairness.

And so they rode on and on through the Theban hills, bathed in pink sunlight. The donkey-boys had fallen behind. Their first enthusiastic effort to show off before the honourable Sitt had quite subsided. They were discussing her now, in none too delicate a fashion. The elder of the two boys, who was the son of a dragoman, and hoped one day to develop into as resplendent a being as his father, was in his way a great reader. He had just finished an Arabic translation of a French novel and he was picturing to his friends Margaret as the heroine of the obscene romance. Poor Margaret!

In Egypt the Arabic translations of low-class French romances, rendered even more unclean by their translation, have a poisonous effect upon the minds of the youths who devour them. Margaret, who had admired the boy's brilliant smiles and beautiful features and teeth, which were even whiter and more attractive than her brother's, little dreamed, as they tell behind and talked together, of the nature of their conversation.

Their blue shirts looked like turquoise in the sunlight, and their little white crochet skull-caps showed to advantage the fine outline of their dark heads. They were certainly handsome young rascals, with an inherited grace of manner.

How her clean, healthy mind would have abhorred and hated them if she had understood their ceaseless chatter! It was like the noise of starlings on a spring morning. In Egypt, where ignorance is bliss, it is certainly folly to be wise. In the East, the inquiring mind, especially in domestic matters, is often its own enemy.

To Margaret, Egypt held for the time being nothing which was unclean or unlovely, nothing which was bettered by ignorance. She was lost in its light and mystery. In the Theban valley it seemed as if she would live on light, that it would supply food for both soul and body. In Egypt God is made manifest in the sun.

CHAPTER III

Margaret had been shown over the "estate"; her modest luggage had been deposited in her bedroom, in which she was now standing, with her arm linked in her brother's.

When she had approved of everything and had told him about her journey, she gave his arm a little hug.

"Oh, Freddy, it's good to be with you again! You were a brick to let me come."

Freddy slid his arm round her shoulders and pressed her closer to him.

"It's topping having you, old girl, but you mustn't mind if I leave you an awful lot alone—I can't help it."

"I know you can't, and if I stew up a bit, you may find work which I can do. I'd love to help."

"Oh, don't fear—I'll find lots for you to do."

She looked at him eagerly, with a touching humility. "What sort of work?"

"Cleaning and sorting out the small finds which the workmen bring in each night, and you could help Mike to do some copying—it's not difficult, and sometimes the colours vanish when they are exposed to the light. He can't get the things done all at one time."

"I see," Margaret said, but in her mind there was a horrible jumble.

"Sometimes I want Mike to help me—we're awfully short of hands just now—I mean, for hands that you can absolutely trust, so if you get into the thing you could do some of Mike's work and let him off."

"I'd love to, and you know my capability as well as anyone, so if you think I could I'll do my best."

"You'll soon know as much as Mike did when he came here, and your painting's all right."

"How nice Mike is!" she said simply.

"He's one of the best."

"Is he going to make Egyptology his profession?"

"I don't know—I don't think so. I'm afraid it's just another bit of
Mike's drifting."

"What a pity!" Margaret was practical.

"I tell him it's time lost—at his age he ought to be at the job he means to succeed in."

"Isn't he taking this up in earnest? He seems to love the life."

"He does love the thing, but the detail of the work, with all its exactitude and rules and regulations, bores him. You'll understand better later on." Freddy opened a copy of the annual report of the British School of Archaeology in Egypt and pointed to pages and pages of written records, outline drawings, measurements and diagrams and plans of tombs and excavations, even accurate copies of small pieces of broken vases and plates and jars—almost everything which had been dug up was carefully recorded; nothing seemed too small or incomplete to be of value.

Margaret looked at it wonderingly. What was all the labour for? Some day would she, too, understand the meaning of it and the use of such scraps and atoms of ancient pottery? Freddy digging out beautiful objects for the British Museum, statues and scarabs, wonderful jewels and necklaces of mummy-beads, was what she had visualized, but of all this she had never dreamed.

She put her finger on the outline drawing of a small fragment of pottery with the tracing of a tiny sprig of some plant on it. Her eyes said "What good can that be?"

Freddy read her meaning. "That small piece of pottery may have shown that foreign vegetation was introduced into the district. It is a new leaf, not met with before. It was probably sent for identification to the Botanical Department of University College in London. Sometimes little things like that give rise to heated discussions and theories. Some excavators won't draw on their imagination—they will have nothing but hard facts; others start a theory which sounds far-fetched—often it comes out correct."

"Realistic and Imaginative Schools!"

"That's about it. The middle way is generally the soundest. The excavator without imagination never gets very far, whereas the man who is apt to let his imagination run wild gets on the wrong track and it's hard to get him off; he overlooks things that won't fit in with his theory."

"I had no idea archaeology involved all this—you're awfully clever, old boy."

"It's unending work and extraordinarily far-reaching, as it's done to-day. In the early days the horrors that were committed in the way of excavating were too awful."

"You work like detectives now, it seems to me, following up the smallest threads and links."

"That's it," Freddy said. "We are just a body of intellectual detectives, running to earth the history of Egypt and the story of the ancient world. We're really far more interested in finding connecting links and establishing disputed facts, than in unearthing statues and figures which please the public. Egyptologists have unearthed the private lives of Egypt's kings and queens."

"I suppose your friend Mike only enters into the artistic side of it?"

"Not altogether—he's awfully keen about Egyptian history and mythology, but he hates detail too much to give his mind and time to all the hard grind of the thing—he likes to study the history we unearth."

"I'm afraid I shall be like him. I want to enjoy the results without the dull labour of digging."

"It's a sort of thing that's born in you, I think."

"You love it, Freddy?"

"Rather! I couldn't stick any other work now."

"You're looking awfully well."

"Never felt fitter."

"The skulls and mummies under your bed haven't done you any harm. Poor aunt Anna, how she dreads them! She always imagines that everything Egyptian has the most malign powers. She's sure some mummy will take its revenge on you for disturbing it."

"Poor old Anna! I suppose she thinks we are the first people who ever thought of disturbing these tombs! She little knows how rare a thing it is to come across one which was not robbed thousands of years ago of all that was worth having. If Egyptian amulets and mummies had such terrible powers, you may be very sure that the modern Arabs, who are the most superstitious people in the world, would not touch the work, and the ancient sextons or guardians of the tombs, who were even more superstitious, wouldn't have dared to disturb the last slumber of a lately-buried Pharaoh. They plundered and sacked the tomb just as soon as ever they could. The tombs were first built up in this valley with the hopes of hiding them; they were built here to get away from the wretches who plundered the cemeteries on the plains. I suppose the Pharaohs who were having their tombs built hadn't discovered that the other tombs had been robbed by the very guardians who were set to watch them. It was left for us to discover that."

"Was that so? It certainly does not look like a valley of tombs."

"They were hidden with all the cunning which the Eastern mind could devise, and yet most of them have been robbed."

They had left the house and were sitting on lounge chairs in the front of the hut. There was a beautiful moon and a sky full of stars, such as Margaret had never seen before.

"Come on, Mike!" Freddy called out. "Don't make yourself scarce. Meg and I don't want to discuss family secrets. Her first night in the valley is going to be the real thing—no intrusion of family skeletons—they can wait."

"Our family skeletons would feel themselves very out of place here,"
Margaret said as Michael Amory appeared.

Michael sat down beside her and very soon all three were talking about topics of general interest. Meg gave them the latest London gossip, which at the time was very dominated by the unrest in Ireland and the Ulster scandals.

Michael, who had on one side of his family Irish blood and strong Irish sentiments, did not voice his opinions. He listened to all that Margaret had to tell her brother, news principally gathered from friends living in Ulster and from the violently anti-Nationalist press. There certainly seemed exciting times in Ireland and Margaret's talk was unprejudiced and interesting.

While they were talking Mike was able to enjoy the girl's beauty and study her individuality. Pretty as she was—and more than pretty—it was her personality which pleased him—the bigness of her nature, the evidence of her wide-mindedness and her quick grasp of fresh subjects, and above all, in her, as in Freddy, there was the ring of unquestionable honour and clean-mindedness.

Margaret under the Eastern moonlight was charming. Her brown hair was so soft and thick that Mike would have liked to put his hand through it, as he saw her do every now and then. Most women, he knew, were shy of disturbing their hair, however naturally arranged it might seem. Margaret, when anything excited her, had a trick of putting her long fingers through her hair, upwards from her forehead, and letting it fall down again as it felt inclined. Her nicety of dress, too, pleased her critical inspector. It was fastidiously simple and fastidiously worn. In this again she was one with her brother.

When English news had been discussed, their talk turned again to Egypt. Margaret greatly desired to study Arabic; but although her brother could speak it extremely well, she knew that he had no time to teach her. It amazed her how much he had had to learn and had learned during his years in Egypt. It was after twelve o'clock when the trio parted for the night.

When Meg was alone in her room, a certain reaction set in; she felt tired and just a little depressed. She wanted to do so much and she knew so little. Beyond the name Rameses she had not recognized the name of one of the kings her brother had mentioned during their conversation that evening—indeed, she had failed to grasp the meaning of almost everything he had said, and yet she knew that he was talking down to her level, or thought he was.

Bewildered with the sense of Egypt, she fell asleep and dreamed of the valley and her wonderful ride.

CHAPTER IV

Margaret had lived in the valley for a little over three weeks, immortal weeks of intense interest and new impressions. She had fitted herself into the atmosphere with a charm and adaptability which left Michael and Freddy wondering how they had ever got on without her. A woman in the hut made all the difference; a feeling of "homeness" now pervaded the camp. Margaret had found so much to do in the way of adding obvious touches of comfort and convenience to the hut and to the tents that she had found little or no time to start upon her studies of Egyptology.

The moonlight nights she had spent either in the company of her brother or Michael, wandering about the valley, or sitting alone outside their primitive home, absorbing the spirit of the desert. She had not felt ready for book-learning.

One evening, after dinner, Michael and she had ridden down the valley and back again, repeating her first journey, so that she might enjoy it by moonlight.

The three weeks had done a great deal to help her to distinguish some of the periods and terms in connection with her brother's work. The word Coptic, for instance, had now its proper significance in her mind, and the terms dynasty and century were no longer jumbled hopelessly together. She also realized that Egypt had been governed by kings and queens with strong individualities of their own; they were not all spoken of by Egyptologists as "Pharaohs," a word which hitherto had suggested to Margaret the title given to the hosts of nameless and half legendary monarchs who ruled over a semi-Biblical kingdom.

Thus far and no further had she gone in the story of the world's first civilization; but she had gone further in her friendship with Michael Amory and in her knowledge of things Mohammedan. He had helped her to unravel the skein of difficulties which Egypt's three distinct and widely-different civilizations had presented to her—the period of ancient Egypt, the period which we now call Coptic or Early Christian and the period of the Arab invasion, with its importation of a Mohammedan civilization. Traces of all these distinct civilizations and religions perpetually come to light in the work of excavation. Nothing puzzled the girl more than the fact that while digging on an ancient Egyptian site, her brother seemed to find Christian and Mohammedan relics. But even when he was speaking of interesting events in comparatively modern Egyptian history, which he took for granted she would appreciate and understand, Margaret felt disgracefully ignorant.

So Michael took her in hand and he thoroughly enjoyed the work of helping her to grasp some of the essential points which would clear her mind before she started upon her serious reading. She had begun taking lessons in Arabic with Michael who could speak it fluently but could neither read nor write it, the written and spoken language being entirely different.

Margaret's quickness astonished him. He was ignorant of her record at college.

He was now having an example of her capacity for learning which she did at a pace which rather unnerved him. Margaret learnt a language as she learned the geography of a city. She would quietly and composedly study a map until the "sense" of the city was in her brain. In beginning her study of Arabic she explained to her brother that she must first of all try to grasp the "sense" of the language.

"I want a map of it, Freddy—you know what I mean."

And Freddy did know. The Lampton type of brain was familiar to him, and his own method of absorbing languages, or any of the subjects which he had had to study for his examinations, was exactly similar to Margaret's, so he set Michael and their Arabic master on the right track.

As a rule, the Arabic alphabet takes a student about three weeks to learn. Margaret, with apparently very little trouble, mastered it in one; it took Michael almost a month. Yet Margaret knew that she was not grasping things with any ease or quickness; she felt too unsettled and impatient. She was "dying," as she expressed it, to push on with Arabic so as to be able to talk to the natives and understand things Mohammedan, but the very fact that Arabic was not going to help her to read Egyptian hieroglyphics, or understand anything at all about ancient Egypt, acted as an irritant to her brain, and retarded her working powers.

"And when my brain is annoyed, or it feels impatient," she said, "bang goes my poor intelligence—it simply won't be hurried; it will only work in its own deliberate way."

Michael declared that the way it was working was good enough for him—rather too good, in fact.

Under such circumstances, the intimacy between Margaret and her brother's best friend naturally ripened very quickly. Margaret felt as though she had known him for months instead of weeks, and more than once she had wondered what life would be like without him. He was much more imaginative than Freddy and more intellectually excitable and curious. He theorized and perhaps romanced where Freddy was apt to accept only proven facts. Michael's temperament was the exact stimulant which Margaret's brain required.

That Michael did his share of hard work Margaret had realized when she accompanied him one day to the scene of his labours. She had had to bend almost double and crawl down a steep shaft, of slippery, sliding debris, to what she thought must be halfway through the world, and pick her way over the rubbish in a semi-excavated chamber in the vast tomb. Some of the chambers were full of huge stones, which had fallen in with the roof. It was in a smaller chamber, where the heat was so great that she could scarcely breathe, that Michael spent his mornings and the greater part of his afternoons.

The heat of Egypt, concentrated for centuries and centuries, seemed to scorch Margaret's face when she entered it. The building was like a temple with side chapels. In one side chapel Michael sat himself down to copy a wide band of gaily-painted decorations, which formed a dado round its three walls.

* * * * * *

On this particular night Margaret had returned from a long walk with Michael. They had left the low level of the valley and its winding white road and had climbed up on to the heights of the Sahara. It had pleased Margaret to feel that her feet were pressing the sands of the great African desert. She had never dreamed that their valley was actually a rift in the rocks of the Sahara, that ocean of sand which travels on and on to infinity.

They had stood side by side on its high ridge, with their eyes looking towards the plain below, the historic plain which once held the capital of the world. The plain of Thebes reached to the river, and across the river lay gay Luxor, with its lights and the luxuries of modern civilization.

Their walk was finished. It had drawn them still closer together. The solitude of the Sahara, with its sense of Divinity, had established a new link in their sympathies; it had created a feeling between them similar to that which is the outcome of two people having been together through strenuous and trying circumstances. They had, as usual, spoken very little; yet they were conscious of having enjoyed each other's society intensely and in the best possible manner, the enjoyment of complete understanding.

Earlier in the evening, when Michael asked her to go for a walk, because Freddy was absorbed in some business letters, he had made the proposal in his habitual way.

"May I come and keep silence with you to-night in the great Sahara?"

And Meg had said, "Yes, do. You know, we really talk to each other all the time—my mind has so much more the gift of speech than my tongue."

And so their silence had been as golden as the sand at their feet, which under Egypt's moon never pales.

Freddy was only too glad that Michael had "cottoned on to Meg," as he expressed it—in fact, he was extremely pleased, for Meg would drive "the other woman" out of his thoughts, and if anything should come of it—well, Mike was one of the very best; Meg could not have a better husband.

But so far no such thought had entered Mike's head, nor yet Margaret's. She was too interested and busy in her new life to think of love; she was only conscious of living as she had never lived before, and as she would have asked to live if she had possessed a wishing-ring. Every hour and minute of her days were a delight. To be with her best "pal" Freddy in Egypt seemed too good to be true, and added to that, there was this unexpected pleasure, the friendship and companionship of the nicest man she had ever met. His rather "drifting" temperament and nature appealed to her as it appealed to Freddy, for the very reason, perhaps, that keenly sensitive as she was and susceptible to her surroundings, her nature and brains were of a practical order. She was not imaginative or moody.

She loved to listen to Michael's vivid, unpractical, Utopian theories and to follow him to where his flashes of brilliance carried him. His dream cities and dream people delighted Margaret. He told her stories as she had never been told stories before, invented as he went along, stories which kept her one minute fighting against tears and the next in delicious laughter.

Margaret never could tell stories, not even to little children; she was not gifted with a creative brain or ingenuity.

On the heights of the Sahara they, had not broken the silence; it was only on their return journey, under a canopy of southern stars, that Margaret had said:

"A short story, please."

And Michael had told her a story about a certain king of Egypt who had a beautiful slave, who had such power over him that she could make him do anything she liked. The things she liked were more fantastic than anything Margaret had ever read in The Arabian Nights.

CHAPTER V

Now, on her lounge-chair in front of the hut, Margaret was resting after their walk. Freddy and Michael were both indoors.

Half an hour or perhaps more might have passed, when suddenly a luminous figure stood in front of her. She had not seen its approach; it was simply there before her, just as if it had taken form out of the desert air.

She recognized that it was the figure of an Egyptian Pharaoh or a high priest—she could not tell which. It wore the short kilt-like garment and the high head-dress, with a serpent's head sticking out from the front of it (the double crown of North and South Egypt, though Margaret did not know it at the time) which had become familiar to her in the pictures of ancient Egyptian kings. She had seen many such figures in her brother's books and in the mural paintings of the tombs.

As Margaret looked with amazement—certainly not fear—at the face of the strange apparition in front of her, she thought that it was the saddest she had ever seen. In the eyes there was a world of suffering and sorrow.

She felt conscious of being awake; the moon and the stars were above her; they surrounded the luminous figure. Her brain struggled for intelligence. Was this the spirit of some great king of Egypt, or of a high priest, or what was it? Was it an optical delusion? If it was a spirit, why had it come to her?

"Tell me who you are," she said. "Do you want anything?" She spoke nervously, not expecting an answer.

"I once ruled over Egypt, and I return to see what my people are doing, if the seed I sowed has borne fruit."

"In this, valley there are no people—it is a valley of the dead."

"My body was brought to my mother's tomb in this valley."

The voice was so sad that Margaret said:

"You are in trouble? You cannot rest? Is that why your spirit has returned to earth?"

"My spirit is with Aton, the master of that which is ordained. I have come to deliver a message; it is for you."

"For me?" Margaret said. "I know nothing at all about Egypt."

"That is not necessary. Aton's love is great and large. It filled the two lands of Egypt; it fills the world to-day."

"But I am ignorant. You think I understand—I don't. . . . I can do nothing."

The sad eyes in the emaciated face, the face of a saint and fanatic, smiled at her fears so tenderly that Margaret's heart was less troubled.

"You can tell the one who is to do my work, the one who knows and loves Aton, Aton—the compassionate, the all-Merciful. Tell him that I bid him take up my work."

"Your work?" Margaret said. "You were a king of ancient Egypt. . . . You speak as if you had worshipped our God . . . there is no one who can do your work . . ." She paused, and then said nervously, "Egypt is different now—it cannot go back."

"Egypt must go on, not back. Nothing is different in the heart of man; your soul is as my soul. Aton liveth for ever in his children. He filleth the two lands of Egypt with his love. I was his messenger."

"But who was Aton?" Margaret said. In her mind she was striving to recall if she had ever heard any references to the worship of one god in Egypt, except by the children of Israel.

"The one who is to do my work will tell you. He has studied my teachings, he understands the love of Aton, whose rays encompass the world."

"Thank you," Margaret said. "I will tell him." She knew instinctively that it was Michael who "understood."

"He knows my work and my desire for the people of Egypt. He knows that my people worship one God, but that they have no love of God in their hearts."

As the figure moved, it became less distinct. Margaret said: "Is that all I am to tell him? Are you going away?" She felt distressed; she knew not why.

"I will return. Give him my message."

"That he is to continue your work in Egypt?"

"That he is to teach my people the love and the goodness of Aton, that his mercy is everlasting."

"Tell me, before you go, who is Aton?"

"You ask, as people asked of a Messenger of God who followed after me in my distant kingdom of Syria. Did He not answer them: 'Who are those that draw us to the Kingdom of Heaven? The fowls of the air, and all the beasts that are under the earth and upon the earth, and the fishes in the sea, these are they which draw you, and the Kingdom of Heaven is within you.'"

"And will he understand if I tell him your words? I am quite ignorant of your teachings."

"He will understand because he has studied my teachings. He knows how fair of form was the formless Aton, how radiant of colour. He knows that the Kingdom which is Heaven is within us. In loving the world and the beauty of the world which is Aton's he knows my commandments."

As Margaret was about to ask why he had not appeared to Michael himself, for she had no doubt that it was upon him that the mission was laid, the vision disappeared and she was left alone, under the clear skies, gazing out over the valley which lay spread before her, in its eternal stillness. She could hear the sound of her last words vibrating in the air. There was not a sign of any living thing near her; only in the distance she could hear the barking of the jackals, a desert sound to which she had already grown so accustomed as to scarcely notice it.

That she had been wide awake she was convinced; she did not feel as though she had been asleep. As she tried to visualize the vanished figure and to repeat to herself the words, which she must either have imagined or heard, Michael came out and offered her a cigarette.

"Who were you talking to?" he said. "Freddy and I thought we heard your voice."

"Michael," she said eagerly, "what time is it? Have I been asleep?
Have I been here long?"

She spoke anxiously, impatiently.

"How can I tell if you have been asleep?" he said, laughingly. "As to the time, it's about eleven o'clock. Do you often talk in your sleep?"

"Sit down beside me," she said urgently, "and let me tell you what has happened. If I have been asleep, I have dreamed it; if I was awake, I have experienced a very extraordinary thing, the moat extraordinary thing you can imagine!"

Michael threw himself down on the ground at her feet.

"While I was sitting here, and, as I thought, wide awake, thinking over our walk in the Sahara and about your story and enjoying the moon and the stars, quite suddenly a figure appeared. I was awfully startled, and yet not frightened."

"What sort of a figure? One of the house-boys pretending to be a spook?"

"No, no house-boy. If I tell you, don't laugh, for even if it was only a dream—which, of course, it must have been—it was very beautiful and solemn."

Now that Margaret was talking to someone about it, the incredibility of the incident seemed much stronger. "It was probably a dream," she said humbly. "All the same, don't make fun of it."

"I won't laugh," he said. "You know I never laugh at such things. I believe in visions—if you like to call these visitations visions."

"But the odd thing is that the figure was exactly like the picture of an Egyptian Pharaoh—that's why it now seems absurd—only his face was not like the proud, arrogant faces of the Egyptian kings one sees in pictures—fighting kings. It was more like the face of a suffering Christ, the saddest face I ever saw, or ever will see again. Oh, those eyes!" Margaret shivered, and paused.

"Please go on," Michael said. His voice encouraged her.

"I can't remember exactly what he said . . . it's all slipping away. He spoke of some character of which I never heard; he said beautiful things—I wish I could recollect the exact words he used."

"Then he spoke to you?" Michael's voice was low, intense.

"Yes, he spoke. He gave me a message for you."

"For me?" Michael said passionately. "For me? How do you know it was for me?"

Margaret trembled as she spoke. "How do I know it was for you?" She paused. "I do know—or, at least, I never doubted while the figure was here. Now it seems foolish—it must all have been a dream."

"No, go on. I want to hear everything."

"He said I was to tell you that you were to carry on his work in the world, he said that you would understand." She paused. "If it was you, you will understand, because he said you had read his teachings and believed in them. Does that convey anything?"

"Yes, yes. Go on—what else?" Michael's voice trembled with impatience.

"There was one word he used which I have forgotten . . . and it meant everything. I wish I could remember it! It's a name I never heard before."

"Think," Michael said, "do try to think—it may come to you." Margaret noticed that he was trying to hide his excitement; he was more nervous than she was.

"He spoke of someone as God, and said beautiful things about Him . . . this God, of everlasting mercy . . . those were his words. . . . Oh, I remember the name!" she cried. "It was Aton—it seemed to be the name of his God. He spoke of Aton as St. Francis spoke of Christ. Aton was in the birds and fishes and flowers and in the cool streams."

Michael turned round and grasped Margaret's hand. He was trembling with excitement; he could hide it no longer.

"It was Akhnaton! Oh, Meg, how wonderful! Tell me everything . . . the spirit of Akhnaton!"

"But who was Akhnaton? I am in the dark. He said he was Aton's messenger."

"First tell me all you can remember."

Margaret tried to recall everything that the Pharaoh had said to her. His exact words she could not repeat, but their essence she contrived to convey quite clearly to the listening Michael.

"Akhnaton," he kept murmuring. "It must be Akhnaton . . . a message to me through you!"

One sentence she was able to repeat almost word for word. "Who are those that draw us to the Kingdom of Heaven? The fowls of the air and all the beasts that are under the earth and upon the earth, and fishes in the sea, these are they which draw you, and the Kingdom of Heaven is within you."

Michael had unconsciously drawn closer to her as she spoke. She heard him say, with a sigh of intense satisfaction, "His very teachings, Christ's own words!"

"Tell me as exactly as you can what he was like."

Margaret closed her eyes to bring back a picture of the vision, the wonderful figure, luminous and bright.

"His sadness is what I remember most plainly. I had thought that all the Pharaohs were proud, hard warrior kings, with no pity in their hearts. This king's face spoke of the suffering of Christ, of a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. His sorrow seemed to be for humanity, for our sins, not the sorrow of a man who had known only personal unhappiness."

Michael said nothing; he was too deeply moved.

"As I told you," Margaret continued, "he had a very strangely-shaped head, more curiously-shaped than I can describe—very long and sloping upwards to the back. He wore a high head-dress which seemed too heavy for his slender neck. Coming from behind it there were bright rays, just like rays of the sun—I have never seen anything like them in any picture . . . oh, it must have been a dream! It all sounds quite absurd." Margaret's trembling voice belied her words.

"Akhnaton!" Michael cried excitedly. "Now there can be no doubt. Oh, Meg!" He had unconsciously been using Freddy's pet-name for her, his hand sought hers sympathetically.

Margaret prized the word "Meg" as it came affectionately from his lips.

"Meg, it is all too wonderful!"

Michael said no more; he had buried his face in his two hands. He would have given his youth to have seen what Margaret had seen.

"Then you don't think it was a dream?"

"How could you have dreamed the very appearance of Akhnaton, or dreamed his personality, when you have never heard of him?"

"I suppose I couldn't," she said. "But was Akhnaton unlike any other
Pharaoh of Egypt?"

"As unlike as St. Francis was to Nero."

A sudden idea came to Margaret. "But," she said, "he spoke to me in English, in my own language. If it was really the spirit of Akhnaton, how could he?"

"Dear Meg, there are more things in divine philosophy than are dreamed of by you or me. In what language did Our Saviour speak to St. Francis, who was an Italian, and to St. Catherine?"

"That is true," Margaret said, in a changed tone. "Will you tell me all about this Pharaoh?"

Michael thought before answering her question, and then he said, "I'd rather not, not yet."

"But why?"

"Because I don't want to put any ideas into your head. All this has come perfectly naturally, and through a modern who was totally ignorant of the message she was conveying. If you were to receive another message, if you ever were to see Akhnaton again, and you knew all about him, it would not be the same thing."

"Oh," Margaret said quickly, "I forgot—he said as he disappeared, 'I will return.'" She gave a deep-drawn sigh and said nervously, "Do you think he will?"

"Will you be afraid? Were you afraid?" Michael's arm had slipped almost round her shoulders. It was a moment when close human contact came very graciously to the girl.

"Afraid? No, he was too gentle, too sad—there was absolutely nothing to be afraid of. I didn't stop to think of the supernaturalness of the vision—I was much too interested. If it was a ghost, I shall never be afraid of ghosts again."

Michael shivered.

Meg looked at him. She had hurt him; she felt a slight shrinking in his sympathy.

"Don't speak of ghosts, Meg—I hate the term, with all its cheapness and irreverence!"

"Then you believe in visions? You are convinced that I have not dreamed all this?"

"If it had been Freddy who had told me, I should have said that he had been asleep and dreamed it, because he knows all about Akhnaton. We are constantly discussing his character, a character I admire much more than he does. But as it was you who saw him and you who have described him as accurately as if you had his portrait in front of you, I feel certain it was not a dream."

Meg remained silent, while her thoughts worked with a new and amazing rapidity. In Egypt she felt that anything was possible; the supernatural might very soon become natural. And certainly the face which she had seen was so unlike the types of the conventional figures of the Egyptian kings she would have visualized if she had tried her best to picture one from imagination, that she began to wonder if Michael was right in his assumption that she had actually seen and been in communication with the spirit of Akhnaton.

"But why should he have chosen me, this great Pharaoh?" she said.
"Modern me, with no knowledge whatsoever of his kingdom or his beliefs!"

"Ah, why?" Michael said. "Have we ever been told why Mary was chosen to be the Mother of Jesus, the Divine Man Who taught the world what Akhnaton tried to teach his people thirteen hundred years before His coming—that the Kingdom of God is within us? Who can tell the manner or the means by which God works? Not half, or a quarter, of the Christian world knows, Meg, how often God speaks to them through mysterious channels—through spirits, if you like. When people are inspired to do good works, to lead what the material world calls holy lives, God has spoken to them, the God Who is within them, the God Who brought you and me together, Meg, to enjoy this valley. Its emptiness and stillness is full of God. Don't you feel that its beauty and solitude are due to His presence?"

Meg shivered. "I know what you mean."

"Don't be nervous. It is a great privilege, this sense of the divine, this beautiful closeness to God, this cutting off of our material selves, this knowledge of our Kingdom of Heaven within us."

"I am far more earth-tied than you, Mike. I do feel these things, but more feebly, less convincingly. I have never thought much about them. We Lamptons are very practical; all our men have led good, clean, straightforward lives, and our women have not made bad wives and mothers, but I don't think we have been idealists, or very religious. Our sense of honour more than our beliefs has kept us straight."

"Poor, poor Akhnaton!" Michael said. His thoughts had strayed while
Margaret spoke.

"Why do you say 'Poor Akhnaton?' Why was he so sad?"

Michael evaded the question by saying, "We won't speak of this to anyone, if you don't mind. Let it be just between you and me."

Margaret hesitated for a moment. There was something stirring and pleasurable to her emotions in the idea of having a secret with Michael; it was like possessing a part of him all to herself; yet she shrank from keeping back anything from Freddy. Even this dream—if it was only a dream—she would naturally have told to him, because it held such a wonderful idea; it would have interested him. It was interesting from the scientific point of view, the fact that she should have been able to project her unconscious brain into the history which she was going to study and accurately visualize and create for herself the personality and teachings of a Pharaoh of whom she had never heard. If it had been the great Rameses, or any Biblical character who in later years entered into Egyptian history, it would have meant less, for already the personality of the great builder-king of Egypt was known to her, by the frequency with which she had heard the expression "Rameses the Great." But of the heretic Pharaoh she had never heard.

"Do you mind not mentioning it even to your brother?" Mike said. "If he was not in sympathy with my belief that it was not a dream, he might unconsciously affect you—he would probably tell you much that I would rather you didn't know until we find out more."

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."

"I know," Meg said. "Do you wonder at hermits and saints?" She smiled a beautiful "Good-night."

When she was alone in her room, she opened Maspero's Dawn of Civilization, which Freddy had placed there for her. She turned over its pages idly. "I wonder if I should find anything about Akhnaton here," she said, "or if this is too early history?"

Suddenly she closed the book. "No, I won't—I will keep my promise. I won't read anything about him."

She paused and thought for a few moments: her brain was too active for sleep, her nerves too much on edge, so instead of reading about Akhnaton, who is known in history as Amenhotep IV., the heretic Pharaoh, she knelt down and prayed to his God, beginning with the old familiar words, "Our Father, which art in heaven," for He is the same God yesterday, to-day and for ever, the God of whom Akhnaton said, "He makes the young sheep to dance upon their hind legs, and the birds to flutter in the marshes," and as a modern writer said of Him, "The God of the simple pleasures of life, Whose symbol was the sun's disc, just as it was the symbol of Christianity. There dropped not a sigh from the lips of a babe that the intangible Aton did not hear; no lamb bleated for its mother but the remote Aton hastened to soothe it. He was the living father and mother of all that He had made. He was the Lord of Love. He was the tender nurse who creates the man-child in woman, and soothes him that he may not weep." [1]

This was the God Margaret prayed to, not knowing that it was Aton, the God whom Akhnaton first taught the world to praise, the God for whom Akhnaton thought his kingdom well lost. He was Margaret's God, as He is our God, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, the God Who revealed Himself to His chosen people in the form of Jesus Christ.

One thousand three hundred years elapsed between the mission of Akhnaton and the mission of Jesus Christ. Still another one thousand and nine hundred years were to elapse before the world was to know that there was a king in Egypt, the land of the crocodile-god and the cat-god, Egypt, a very Pantheon of animal-headed gods, to whom God revealed Himself as he revealed Himself to Christ, a God of Love, a God of Tenderness and of Mercy—"The master of that which is ordained."

[1] Weigall's Akhnaton, Pharaoh of Egypt.

CHAPTER VI

The next day Freddy announced at breakfast, which was a typically
English meal—except for the excellence of the coffee—that there was
to be a very extra-special ball the next night at the Cataract Hotel at
Assuan.

"Would you like to go to it, Meg?" he asked. "I think you'd enjoy it—I can guarantee you plenty of partners."

"Would you go to it if I wasn't here?" Meg asked tentatively. The old Meg in her thrilled at the idea of dancing on a good floor with good partners. Freddy had told her of Michael's record as a dancer, so she knew that she could count on two partners, at least, for Freddy and she had learnt dancing together, and had enjoyed nothing better than waltzing with each other.

"Yes, I thought of going," Freddy said. "I can leave everything all right here, and it's about time we had a day off." He turned to Michael. "Carruthers is coming to see me. He wants to stay the night, so that's all right." Carruthers was a fellow-excavator attached to a camp at Memphis.

"Then I'd love to go," Meg said. "I haven't danced for ages, but I left my 'gay rags' at Luxor."

"I'll send Abdul for them," Freddy said, "and you can go to Assuan early to-morrow and get your traps in order. I don't want a fright, mind—the tourists dress like anything."

Meg laughed. "I'll do my best, but don't expect too much of travelled garments."

While she was speaking quite naturally and with genuine interest about the ball, a vision was forming itself before her eyes, her visitor of the night before; the dark sad eyes and the emaciated face of the heretic Pharaoh became extraordinarily clear. It usurped her mind so completely that she found it difficult to pay attention to the subject which she was discussing.

She tried to banish the influence, but failed. She had forgotten the name which Michael gave to the God whom the Pharaoh had so greatly loved. She could not even recollect the words of his message. Only his luminous form and melancholy eyes were there in the sunlight before her.

She began to wonder which vision was the more fantastic and unreal—the picture which she had visualized of the grand ballroom in the magnificent hotel at Assuan, filled with men and women in modern evening dress, or the figure of the ancient Pharaoh, as he had come to her in this barren valley in the western desert.

"Wake up, Meg!" Freddy said. "Dreaming seems infectious."

Meg knew what her brother meant. So did Mike.

"Don't forget that the practical Lampton mind is a jolly good thing. That old drifter won't like living in a tent or a caravan, on twopence a day, when he's sixty!" Freddy lit his cigarette; he had finished breakfast. "You'll come, of course?" His eyes spoke to Mike. "Gad, what a topping morning it is?"

"Rather!" Mike said abstractedly. "Unless you want me to stay here?"

"Carruthers will be all right here alone—he knows the place as well as I do." Freddy's voice did not express much eagerness for Michael's company at the ball, and Michael knew the reason. Freddy was unable to decide in his own mind whether it was wiser to urge Mike to go and let him see Meg as Freddy knew he would see her in all her pretty finery, and let him enjoy the pleasure of her perfect dancing, or allow him to stay behind and so avoid the risk of meeting the woman whom he knew would be there. He had seen her name in the visitors' list in the Egyptian Gazette. She was staying at the Cataract Hotel at Assuan. He was so divided as to the wisdom of Michael's going or staying that his response had lacked his usual note of sincerity.

"Then I'll go," Michael said, for into his mind had floated a vision of Margaret dressed in her ball-finery and dancing as Freddy's sister would dance—dancing with other men.

"Then that settles it," Freddy said. "We'll go a buster to-morrow night and we'll make up for it after. You can begin real work next week, Meg—sorting and painting, if you care to."

When Freddy was ready to start off to his work, Meg went with him. It was too early for the sun to be dangerous and the air was deliciously fresh and clean. Meg's hands were dug deep down into the pockets of her white silk jersey, just as her brother's were dug deep down into the pockets of his white flannel coat. Meg's long limbs looked almost as clean-cut as her brother's in her closely-fitting white skirt. As Michael watched them walk off together, he said to himself, "They are absurdly alike; they are like twins—they see eye to eye and think mind to mind."

As he said the words his sense of Meg contradicted his last remark, for he knew that he could say things to Meg which Freddy would not understand; he knew that if they had thought mind to mind he would not have asked her to keep the secret which they now held between them.

Thoughts full of tender affection for Freddy made him feel happily contented; to have such a friend and to be allowed to work with him was a privilege deserving of sincere thanks. For a few moments he stood lost in gratitude and praise. These dreaming moments, about which he was so often good-naturedly chaffed, were not entirely wasted; they gave him the spiritual food his nature demanded. The desert holds many prayers.

"Why so abstracted to-day, Meg?" Freddy said, as they reached the site of excavation. Margaret was no great talker at any time, but there was something new in her silence this morning and Freddy felt it.

"Am I abstracted? I didn't know it."

"A bit off colour? Are you feeling the sun? You'd better go back before it gets any hotter and rest more to-day, if we're to go to the dance to-morrow."

"Oh, I adore the sun," Meg said. "I believe in my former incarnation I worshipped it."

"A disciple of Akhnaton? I think we all are, if we only knew it. Poor
Akhnaton!"

"Oh, Freddy, who was this Akhnaton? No, I forgot—don't tell me." Her voice, for Meg, was emotional, excited. "I want to spell things out for myself."

"What do you know about him?" Freddy said. "I thought you hadn't begun reading yet? Has Mike been preaching his religion? Mike's dotty on Akhnaton—his religion's all right, but as a king he was an ass."

"No, no, Mike hasn't told me anything about him and I really would rather come to him in his proper place in history. I mustn't dip, though it's a great temptation, but it spoils serious work."

They had stopped and were looking down from the height of the desert to the level of the excavation which was furthest advanced. Things had developed greatly since Margaret's first visit. Now she was able to see that they were at work upon a vast building of some description. The enormous size and the beautiful cutting of the stones and the exquisite strength of the mortarless masonry indicated noble proportions.

"How interesting it's getting!" she said. "I love these blocks of evenly-hewn stone in the sand—they look so mysterious, and eternal."

"I want to take the men off this, if we're going to Assuan to-morrow—it's getting too hot."

"Why?"

"Because there were indications yesterday that we had struck a sort of rubbish-heap of things which had been turned out of the tomb."

"What kind of things?"

"I don't know yet . . . all sorts of things. Probably the relatives of the dead threw them out when they visited the tomb from time to time; just as we throw away faded wreaths and flowers, they threw away accumulations of broken vases and offerings."

"And you don't want the workmen to know?"

"I want to be on hand when they are cleaning it up, and it can't all be done in one day. They are quite capable of sneaking back here before the gaphir's about in the morning, to see what they can pick up, to sell to the visitors in Luxor. It's a great temptation."

"I suppose they consider the tiny things they find far more theirs than ours?"

"I suppose they do, but, mind you, the Museum in Cairo gets its pick and the choice of all that's found in Egypt in the various sites of excavation."

"Oh!" Margaret said. "I didn't know that."

"Certainly it does," he said, "and rightly, too, although nothing would be saved or be in any museum if it wasn't for the various European schools. The natives would eventually plunder and steal everything, and if the excavation had all been in the hands of the Egyptian Government, heaven knows where the treasures would be to-day! As it is, Cairo has the finest Egyptian museum of antiquities in the world."

"Akhnaton was buried in this valley?"

"Yes, in later days in his mother's tomb. His first burial-place was at Tel-el-Amarna."

"How odd! That's what he told me last night," Meg said dreamily, almost unconsciously. She could hear again the sad voice of the Pharaoh, saying, "I was laid in my mother's tomb in this valley."

Freddy looked quickly up at her; he had left her to descend to the workmen's level. "So Mike has told you about him, then? I thought he would!"

Margaret blushed to the roots of her hair. "Just one or two things—nothing really very interesting."

"I knew he would, sooner or later. He's got Akhnaton on the brain."

"He really has scarcely mentioned him to me—never until last night."

"Go back, Meg," Freddy said, as he disappeared down a deep channel in the excavations. "It's getting too hot for no hat. You must be careful—you can't afford to play tricks with the sun in Egypt. It's better to worship it like Akhnaton than to trifle with it."

"All right, I'll go," Meg said, and as she went she wondered how it came to pass that Akhnaton was both a sun-worshipper and a devout believer in the Kingdom of God which is within us.

CHAPTER VII

The ballroom at Assuan was a wonderful sight. Margaret had never been to a more brilliant dance. The dresses of the women amazed her; they were so costly and beautiful. The air of Egypt is so dry that their delicacy of texture had been uninjured by travel. The gay uniforms of the English officers, the Orders of the officials, looked their best in the vast room, whose architecture and decorations were a fine reproduction of ancient Egyptian art.

Margaret was radiantly happy; she loved beauty and the dignity of vast surroundings. In Egypt it seemed to her that everything was done on an imposing and noble scale, everything except the little mud villages of the desert, her "dear little brown homes in the East." Happiness made her appear very lovely—indeed, she was beautiful that night and many people asked who the charming girl was, who danced so well and who looked so happy.

She danced very often with Freddy, so naturally people began to say that at last Lampton had been "caught." She had danced very often, too, with Michael, and even Freddy's step had not suited hers so well. With Michael there was something more than mere perfection of dancing; there was the added sympathy of mind as well as body. When his arms encircled her for the first time and Margaret felt him steering her gently but firmly through the well-filled room, such a perfect sense of rest pervaded her senses that a sudden desire to cry, just softly and happily, came to her. Happy Margaret!

Neither of them cared to speak while they were dancing; they remained as silent as they had done when they stood together in the vast stretch of the great Sahara, but they were conscious—and happily so—of each other's enjoyment. Could two young people be so close to each other, two people so greatly in sympathy with one another, and not know something of the thought in each other's minds?

"Will you let me take you in to supper?" was all that Michael said, at the end of the last dance which they were to have together. He handed her reluctantly over to her waiting partner as he spoke.

Meg nodded her assent and smiled radiantly over her partner's shoulder as she whirled off.

Her beautiful white shoulders showed up the duskiness of her hair; her head was distinguished and arrestive. As Michael was watching her and waiting for her to come round the room again to where he was standing, so that their eyes might meet, a gentle, caressing hand was laid on his own and a voice said:

"Ah! now I know why you have not looked for me. Who is she?"

Michael started. The low, tender voice instantly thrilled every nerve in his body, while at the same moment an overwhelming desire to slip away and lose himself amongst the dancers came over him.

"She is a fine-looking creature," the voice went on, "but that type gets coarse at forty, don't you think?"

Michael swung round quickly and faced the lovely woman who had spoken to him. Her figure, in spite of its childish slimness, suggested not youthful purity but a sensuous grace. In her soft, flesh-tinted gown of chiffon, which left her arms and neck quite bare, a dress which merely suggested a veiled covering for her tiny body, she was temptingly feminine. To most men she would have been irresistible, for she was as supple and straight as a child of thirteen.

Her eyes gazed familiarly into Michael's; they were inviting and exquisitely lovely. Even Mrs. Mervill's bitterest enemies had to admit the charm of her eyes. Hard and cruel they could be, just like the uncut amethysts which in colour they resembled—eyes of a deep, bluish purple. They had looked their cruellest a moment ago, for envy had crossed her path. Every inch of her tiny person was envious of the girl who had smiled over her partner's shoulder to Michael Amory. She was envious because she could see at a glance that Margaret was all that was fine and clean and noble in womanhood. The girl whom Michael Amory had been looking at would always get what was best in men, while she could only get what was worst.

"My partner has had to leave me," she said to Michael, for he had paid no attention to her remarks about Margaret. "He had a touch of fever; it came on quite suddenly. Will you take me out of the ball-room?"

They had moved off together, Michael unable to help himself; he could not allow her to go alone.

"If you aren't dancing, let us go and sit out on the balcony—it's too lovely to be indoors. Now, isn't it?" she said, as they reached the wide covered loggia, dotted with palms and basket-chairs and small tables, which looked over the black rocks of the first cataract on the Nile, a scene which in all Egypt has no equal, for it is unique and extraordinary.

Beyond the river, with its black rocks, which showed in the water like the indefinite forms of seals or shoals of swirling porpoises, there was the bright yellow sand of the desert, which led into a world of primitive silence, while above them and all around them there were the stars and the night of Egypt.

Mrs. Mervill had left the ball-room early, because she knew that the balcony would be almost empty during the first part of the evening.

"Isn't having this all to ourselves better than dancing in that crowd?
This is Egypt."

"It's beautiful," Michael said, as he arranged the cushions in her chair to suit her taste, which was scarcely in keeping with the views of a dignified woman. When he had finished, Mrs. Mervill let her hand slip down his coat-sleeve—she had laid it there as she spoke to him—until it rested on his wrist; her fingers were caressing.

"Tell me," she said, looking up into his face with a winning and soft expression, "what have you been doing with yourself since we parted? You have been much in my thoughts—never out of them, indeed."

"My usual work in the camp," Michael said. "Its interest always increases, and although it seems pretty much the same every day to ordinary people, to us it is full of variety."

"Lucky man! We poor women have no such distractions. I want to live in the desert," she said eagerly. "I want to sleep in the open under these stars."

Anyone might have made the same remark with no arrière pensée in their words. Mrs. Mervill could not. Her remark contained an invitation; Michael knew it.

"Can you never get away?" she asked. "It would be my expedition, if you would run it for me."

Michael moved from her side, with the pretence of drawing a chair to within speaking distance of her. She had reluctantly to let his wrist slip from her fingers.

"Say you will arrange it," she pleaded. "For weeks I have felt the call of the desert and you know you'd love to come."

"I can't do it," Michael said, almost sternly. "Please don't tempt me
. . . I have work to do."

"Oh, but I will tempt you!" She laughed the soft, low laugh of passion. "By every means in my power. With you it is so difficult to know what will tempt you most. Am I to appeal to the mystic side of you, or to the human? I think the human Michael will suit me best, the Michael who longs to let himself go and enjoy the fullness of Egypt and the wonders of the desert!"

"Don't appeal to any part of me," he said quickly. "Leave me to do my work in the best possible way—try not to act as a disturbing influence."

"Then I have been a disturbing influence?" Michael's voice had betrayed the fact that his work had not been accomplished without difficulty.

"Yes," he said, for the spirit of truth was always uppermost in Michael. "For some days after I left you the last time I found great difficulty in concentrating my mind on my work. . . . I was dissatisfied."

"Then I succeeded!" The amethyst eyes, devoid of all hardness now, caressed Michael and disturbed his nerves. The woman was very beautiful, and he was conscious that her mind was set on her desire to win him. He knew that it was not love; he knew that their intimacy was not one of wholesome friendship. He was becoming more and more awake to the fact that this wealthy woman, who looked like a child but for the expression of her eyes, had taken an unreasoning desire to have him for her lover. In a measure he could not but feel flattered, for with her beauty and wealth she could have had the attention of better men than himself. He was too generous in his judgment of women to attribute her desire to the lowest motives, the prospect of enjoying through another the innocence which she had lost herself so long ago.

"I tried to reach you, Mike. I used every effort of my will-power, or mind-power, or whatever power you like to call it. I insisted on your feeling me. I sent myself out of myself to you."

"Why did you do it?" he said. He had leaned forward and had laid his hand on the cushions of her chair, at the back of her head. His distressed voice was less harsh.

"Why did I do it? Because, dear, I want you." Her voice was low and wooing; it was one of her charms.

Michael did not answer. His senses were beginning to throb. The sound of a native earthen drum, with its sensual thud, thud, thudding, and the watery note of a key striking a glass bottle, as an accompaniment to the slow measures of bare feet on the deck of a Nile boat, added an undefinable touch, of Oriental passion to the scene.

Michael tried to draw away his hand, but she caught it and pulled his arm round her neck and held his long fingers imprisoned under her chin.

He protested. The thud, thud, thud of the darabukkeh below kept time with the throbbing of his pulses, while the subconscious visualizing of the body-movements of the Sudanese dancers aided and abetted the woman in her designs.

"You know, dear, you are behaving very foolishly. I must never see you again if you do this sort of thing. It can only lead to terrible unhappiness for us both."

She gently kissed his fingers, pressing her teeth against his knuckles—with all her education and fashionable clothes, a creature as primitive as any tent-dweller in the desert.

"Don't say you won't see me again. I won't be foolish, I promise. But
I am very lonely, you don't know how lonely, Michael."

"Poor little woman!" he said breathlessly; he was genuinely sorry for her. If her nature craved for love and affection, it was hard for her to live as she did, without it.

"It's Egypt," she said, "Egypt and the desert. I want you all alone, Michael, in the loneliest part of the loneliest desert in the world, and I want as many kisses as there are stars in the heavens—kisses that only my love and Egypt can teach you how to give!"

"I must leave you," Michael said again, "if you will speak like that."

He got up to go. Mrs. Mervill also rose from her reclining position on her long deck-chair, and sat upright.

"I do, I do!" she said, while she held up her beautiful lips to his face. "There is no one to see, there is no one to care! I want a kiss for every star there is in the heavens."

The man could bear it no longer; all Egypt was tempting him. He bent his head and kissed her lips.

From the river below came the long cries to Allah of the Moslem boatmen and the clear music of an 'ood or lute; the deep note of the native drums had been silenced. It had given way to the song of an Arab tenor. The music of the 'ood, whose seven double strings, made of lamb's gut, are played with a slip of a vulture's feather, drifted through the clear air. The tenor song was an outpouring of a lover's full heart. The passion of the night had triumphed.

At their feet lay the black rocks and the swirling waters of Egypt's Aegean and the buried city of Syene, and in the distance, yet surely affecting their senses with its tragedy and grace, was Philae, the fairy sanctuary of the Nile. In the submerged temple of Philae lies the bridal chamber of the beloved Osiris and his wife Isis.

None of all this was lost upon Michael, whose nature was ever tuned to the concert pitch of his surroundings. Assuan affected him as a gorgeous orchestra affects a lover of Wagner.

But the sound of the hotel band, bringing a waltz to a close, made Mrs. Mervill leave her lounge-chair and seat herself circumspectly on a more upright one. Michael did not sit down; he wandered about, speaking to her abruptly and unhappily at brief intervals.

She was answering one of his questions when Margaret Lampton, flushed and radiant with the excitement of dancing, came upon the scene; her partner was a little behind her. Mrs. Mervill neither saw her nor heard her footsteps; Michael had both seen and heard her. Margaret, thinking that he was alone, walked quickly towards him. Suddenly she heard a hidden voice say caressingly,

"I will promise you anything you like, Michael mine, and keep it, too, if you will try to see me as often as ever you can. Remember how lonely I am, and that I shall live for your visits."

Margaret stopped. Egypt had become as cold as the Arctic. She felt lost. Her intention had been to remind Michael that it was almost supper-time. Her partner was now by her side. He knew Michael Amory and spoke to him.

Mrs. Mervill had risen from her chair and as she came forward, Margaret hated her, even while she thought that she was the fairest and most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Michael introduced the two women to each other, excellent foils as they were in their beauty and type.

As Margaret gave one of her steadfast honest looks right into the eyes of the delicately-tinted woman in front of her, she was conscious of an appalling dislike and fear of her. She was equally conscious of the woman's antagonism to herself, although her words had been charming and friendly.

"If she wasn't beautiful and tiny, I'd like to wring her neck and throw her to the crocodiles below!"

This was what might be interpreted as Margaret's true feelings as she answered Mrs. Mervill's question and succeeded in making some banal remarks about the view and the magnificence of the hotel. When she had said all that politeness demanded of her, she turned away, a trifle disconsolately.

"Please wait one moment, Miss Lampton," Michael said. "I think this is the supper-interval. Mrs. Mervill," he said, "can I take you back to your partner? I am engaged to Miss Lampton for supper."

"No, thanks," she said, "I didn't engage myself to anyone for supper." Her eyes plainly expressed the fact that they had hitherto at these dances always enjoyed the supper-interval together. "Will you be very kind and send a waiter out here with a glass of champagne and some sandwiches? That is all I want."

Michael looked disturbed. "But I don't like leaving you alone."

"I prefer the company of the stars," she said, "to just anybody—really
I do. I never feel that one comes to Egypt for these hotel dances."
This was meant for Margaret, to make her feel frivolous and vulgar.

Margaret refused to accept it. "My brother and I have been dancing every dance and every extra and forgetting all about Egypt. Have you?" She turned to Mike.

"No, I have been sitting this last one out with Mrs. Mervill. She feels tired. And certainly Egypt is very much here." He pointed to the scene before them.

"Yes, quite another Egypt," Margaret said. "Egypt has so many souls."

"And I have to be a little careful," Mrs. Mervill said, "of over-fatigue."

"I am sorry," Margaret said, while she inwardly noted the woman's perfect health. The slender feminine appearance of her rival had nothing in common with ill-health; a blush-rose bud was not more softly and evenly tinted. She suggested to Margaret something good to eat—pink and white ice-creams mingled together in a crystal bowl.

Healthily devoid as Margaret was of sex-consciousness, it was curious that this first close inspection of Mrs. Mervill should have told her what she never dreamed of before, or even thought about—that she loved Michael Amory. This woman was going to come between herself and Michael; that there was great intimacy between them she felt certain, also that Michael, even though he might care for the woman, was not himself under her influence. She had never seen him look as he looked now.

The partner who had brought Margaret out on to the balcony constituted himself Mrs. Mervill's cavalier. He was immensely struck by her beauty and was inwardly overjoyed when Michael Amory introduced him to her. He had not engaged himself for supper because there had been no one with whom he cared to spend the time, except Margaret, and she was engaged to Michael. Now that he had obtained an introduction to Mrs. Mervill, he was delighted to attend to her wants.

If Michael Amory had seen Millicent Mervill's attitude towards her companion, he might have felt—and very naturally—a certain amount of vanity. Born with little or no sense of honour or morals, she was extremely fastidious. No one could have been more selective. Ninety-nine per cent. of the men she met bored her not to tears, but to rudeness; for the hundredth she might feel an unbridled passion.

Margaret and her companion were seated at a little supper-table in the immense dining-room of the hotel, a room which been built after the proportions and decorated in the manner of an Egyptian temple. Their table was close to a column, which was decorated from pedestal to capital with the most familiar mythological figures of ancient Egypt. Tall lotus flowers with their green leaves decorated the lower portion of it. The whole thing certainly was an amazingly clever reproduction of one of the ancient columns of the famous hypostyle hall at Karnak. A gayer scene could hardly be imagined, for the bright colours of the ancient decorations had been faithfully copied.

Margaret had been talking rather more than was her wont to Michael, about things which neither really interested her nor were in sympathy with their mood. Their former intimate silence had given place to a banal conversation, which hurt them, one as much as the other, while they kept it up.

The nicest part of the evening, for so Meg had thought that it would be, was proving a failure, a dire and pitiful failure. The only thing to do was to accept Michael under the new conditions and get what pleasure she could out of the magnificent scene. The Egyptian servants, in their long white garments and high red tarbushes, the Nubians, in their full white drawers and bright green sashes and turbans, were moving silently about, administering as only native servants can administer to the wants of the fashionably-gowned women and brightly-uniformed men who filled the magnificent hall.

"How absurd that woman looks," Margaret said, "sitting with her back to that figure of Isis." She knew now at a glance the goddess Isis as she was most familiarly represented. "I do hope I don't look quite so grotesque!"

Michael looked at the woman, whose hair was decorated with an enormous egrette's crest, in the manner of a Red Indian's head-dress. Margaret knew quite well that she herself did not in any way look grotesque; since she had been in Egypt she had conceived a horror of the eccentricities of Western fashions, therefore her speech was insincere.

"Of course you don't," Michael said absently. "You look just awfully nice." He felt shy and blushed as he spoke, for he knew that he had severed himself from Margaret by an unspeakable gulf, that he had now no right to say anything intimate to her. Earlier in the evening he could have said with frank enthusiasm how beautiful he thought her, if an occasion like the present had offered itself.

They were now at the ice-creams, wonderful concoctions with glowing lights inside them, and their futile conversation had dribbled out, but the silence which had fallen upon them was constrained; it had nothing in common with the old happy silence of mental sympathy, the silence of united minds.

Margaret had still two dances to give Michael, and she wondered how they were to get through them. The supper had proved heavy and dragging. It seemed scarcely possible that they were the two people who had stood, delighting in each other's companionship, on the high ridge of the Sahara desert two evenings ago, that it was this man to whom she had told her wonderful dream. She wondered if he had forgotten it.

As she thought of her dream, their eyes met. Michael's dropped quickly. With Mrs. Mervill's kisses still burning into his soul, he banished the thought of the divine King. The seed of evil which she had planted in the garden of his soul many weeks ago had been watered and nourished to-night. It had sprung forth like the green blades on the banks of the Nile after the inundation.

As Michael's eyes dropped, Margaret took her courage in both hands and said as brightly as she could, "We're not enjoying ourselves particularly, are we? We seem to have lost each other. Shall we cut our two dances and try to find ourselves again in the valley? I hate this sort of thing."

"If you wish it." Michael's voice was reproachful.

"Do be honest—you know I'm boring you. You have lots of friends here, and I can get partners."

"Things do seem to have taken a wrong turn," he said, "but it was not of my willing." Inwardly he cursed the hour he had ever come. She would never believe that it had been to see her in her evening-dress and to enjoy the rapture of dancing with her.

"We are neither of us much good at pretending," Margaret said. "But never mind—better luck next time! And we had some lovely dances in the early part of the evening."

Her words, without meaning it, implied that before she had been introduced to Mrs. Mervill, they had been happy. They had risen at Margaret's instigation from their table and were wending their way out of the supper-room. Michael was drifting towards the wide balcony, towards the fresh cool air of the river.

"No," Meg said determinedly, "not there." A vision of Mrs. Mervill, pink and fair and seductive, had risen before her, the rose-leaf creature with the hard eyes, who had so abruptly broken her sympathy with Michael.

Michael, without speaking, quickly turned the other way. He let her through the big entrance to the front door of the hotel. The view was ugly and uninteresting, like the surroundings of any huge Western public offices or government buildings. The glory of the hotel was the view from the balcony, overlooking the Nile, and its superb interior decorations.

"The old trade-route to Nubia lies back there," Michael said, indicating the desert, which lay out of sight at the back of the hotel.

"The old route to 'golden-treasured Nubia'?" Margaret said. "Fancy, so close to this fashionable hotel—who would ever dream it!"

"The caravan-route to Nubia—the Kush of the Bible—an immortal road.
To me the word Nubia is full of suggestion."

There was something so distant in the tone of Michael's voice as he spoke, that Margaret found little pleasure in hearing what he had to tell her. How delightful he could have been upon such a subject as the old trade-route to Nubia she knew only too well, so well that she was not going to let herself be hurt by his aloof way of mentioning it.

"Egypt to-night," she said, "for me means a big ball and gay dresses. I have lost the other sense of Egypt." She turned up her eyes to the heavens. "Except for the heavens," she said, "I really might have been at the Carlton Hotel in London, at an Egyptian fête held there, or something of the kind."

"As you said, Egypt has so many souls, but its heavens have only one. The best starlight night at home is a poor, poor affair compared to this."

Before he had finished speaking Freddy appeared and claimed Margaret for a dance. She left Michael almost gladly, yet hating the feeling that they were still as far apart as they had been when they sat down to supper.

What a strange night it had been! The one half pure joy and the other certainly not happiness.

Alone in the open space in front of the hotel, Michael stood and cursed his own weakness. Why had he stooped to those lips? Why had he allowed himself to be unworthy of his intimacy with Margaret? He was sorry for Mrs. Mervill, for he believed her stories about her husband's drunkenness and degrading habits, as he almost believed that she had for some strange reason fallen in love with himself. He wished with all his might that women were nicer to one another, so that one of them, a woman like Margaret, for instance, might have given this lonely, lovely creature the affection and intimate friendship she craved for. Women shunned her and so she had to resort to men for the companionship and also for the affection she needed.

Michael understood very well the pleasures of sympathetic friendships; he was conscious that to himself human sympathy meant a very great deal, and so he felt sincerely sorry for the woman who was denied it. He liked the quiet places of the untrodden world; cities had no charm for him. But he needed human sympathy in his solitude to make his enjoyment complete. He felt sorely annoyed with the fates which made it impossible for him to give Mrs. Mervill all that she asked of him and at the same time continue on the footing on which he had been with Margaret.

And how was it that he could not? How was it that Margaret had instantly divined that there was more than an ordinary or desirable intimacy between Mrs. Mervill and himself? How was it that he had felt dishonoured and ashamed?

He had to return to the ball-room to find his partner for the next dance. As he did so, he passed Mrs. Mervill, who was coming out of it. She looked at him with laughing eyes, a soft, beautiful creature, of supple movements, whose perfect lips had told him the promises which she was capable of fulfilling. If he had not known Margaret, what would he have done?

But Margaret held him. He knew that she was worth a thousand Mrs. Mervills, in spite of the latter's more vivid beauty and her quick wit. For Mrs. Mervill was clever and could be extremely witty and amusing when she liked. Her daring tongue stopped at very little, but it had the gift of suggestion, which always saved her stories or repartees from indelicacy or vulgarity.

Margaret, who had offered him nothing but friendship, stood out in his mind as one of the women with whom it was a privilege for any man to be on intimate terms. In his thoughts of her, Margaret was high and strong and pure. When his mind dwelt on her, it soared; when it dwelt on Mrs. Mervill, it grovelled. He did not wish to grovel; it was not in his nature to do so; it took a woman such as Mrs. Mervill to bring his lower self to the surface. He hated himself for even unconsciously condemning her and he tried always to remember her charming moods, the hours they had spent together when they first met on the gay pleasure-boats on the Nile. Those were the days when the clever woman hid from the man whom she had selected her baser nature. During those guarded days she had been gay and amusing and apparently as innocent as a schoolgirl. It was only after a considerable number of meetings and many exchanges of thought had passed between them, that she began to show her hand, or dared to convey to him in a hundred insinuating ways and expressions the real nature of her feelings for him. Very grudgingly and very reluctantly Michael had to admit to himself that she had fallen in his estimation, that he would not be sorry if they were never to meet again. Yet he was not strong enough to cut himself off from her; her appeal to his pity stood in his way.

He had never met any woman before in the least like her. Her fearless audacity had at first, just at first, somewhat amused, as it amazed him. He had scarcely credited its being genuine. As she owed nothing to her husband, or so she said, she saw no reason why she should not live the life of a wealthy bachelor, who enjoyed it to the full. What was sauce for the gander was sauce for the goose.

To gain any hold on Michael's affections, she had recognized that she must go carefully. It was her role to let him think that her passion for him was a totally new thing in her life, that she had at last found the man who could help her to be the woman she longed to be. With her knowledge of man-kind, she knew how to awaken and keep alive in Michael the only element in his character upon which she could work, the very element he strove to banish and subdue.

Later on in the evening she sought him out, because she had discovered that Margaret Lampton was living in her brother's camp and that she was in daily companionship with Michael. Freddy had told her this to anger her. He was proud of his sister's beauty and pleased that Mrs. Mervill had seen her admired.

"Michael," Mrs. Mervill said, "that dark girl is in love with you. She hates me."

"Don't talk nonsense!" Michael said. "Why will you spoil our interesting conversation by reverting to a forbidden topic?"

They had been talking intellectually and seriously for quite half an hour. Mrs. Mervill was a great reader, and she had determined to place herself in a position to talk intelligently, if not learnedly, to Michael about things Egyptian. She had been reading what Ebers had to say about the tragedy of Isis and Osiris being the foundation of many latter-day Egyptian romances. It had even found its way into The Thousand and One Nights.

Mrs. Mervill was much more word-fluent than Margaret. Often her imagery was charming.

"Because it fills my heart, Michael. It is the background of everything. I saw the birth of hatred in her eyes—she has never hated before."

"I don't think she knows what hate means," he said, "and I wish you would leave her alone."

"I have not spoken about her before."

"You said she would be fat and coarse at forty."

Millicent Mervill caught his hands in hers. "You dear silly boy, so she will, both fat and complacent, but then I shall be thin and shrewish and shrivelled."

Michael laughed. "You are a tease!" he said good-naturedly.

"'The Rogue in Porcelain' used to be my name at school. But tell me—how long is that dark-haired girl going to stay with her brother?"

"I don't know," Michael said. "If she doesn't feel the heat, perhaps until he returns to England and the camp breaks up."

Mrs. Mervill clenched her pretty teeth. "And you expect me to be good and quiet and submissive and stay here?"

"I want you to be reasonable."

"That's out of the question—I very seldom am, and I am not going to be to please Miss Lampton, I can tell you!"

"Then what are you going to do?" He could not be hard on the woman for loving him; he wished he could help her and induce her to be reasonable. If she had been free, he would have felt himself bound to marry her.

"I will arrange something," she said. "I don't know what."

"What sort of thing?" he said. "Nothing foolish! Do look at things dispassionately."

"I won't!" she said. Her face was upraised to the stars. "I won't give you up to that dark-haired girl."

He swung round and spoke roughly. "Don't you know I can't be yours, and you can't be mine?"

"And you want me not to be a dog in the manger, while you enjoy the next best thing that comes along!"

"I never said so. Your mind jumps at conclusions. I hate such ideas and conversation. I wish you would stop it."

"I will be worse than a dog in the manger," she said, "if you make love to that girl in the desert."

"Hush!" Michael cried. His grasp of her wrist hurt her. "Hush! You will make me hate you."

"No, you won't, Michael," she said, "because you have kissed me. Words were made to hide our feelings, kisses to reveal them." She suddenly paused and looked as sad and innocent as a corrected child. "I would be a saint, if you would let yourself love me, Michael."

"What would be the good?" he said. "You belong to some one else."

"A nice sort of belonging!" she said, disconsolately. "He doesn't care a scrap what becomes of me."

"Can't you possibly divorce him?" Michael did not mean that he would marry her if she did; his mind was groping for some solution of the problem.

Millicent Mervill remained silent. "I could let him divorce me," she said at last.

"Don't!" Michael said intuitively. His voice amused the woman.

"I don't mean to," she said. "Why should any woman be divorced because she lives the same life as her husband does when he is apart from her?"

"You don't, and aren't going to," Michael said earnestly.

"I would, Michael, with you—only with you."

"I wish you could have been friends with Miss Lampton instead of hating her," he said sadly.

"Pouf!" Millicent Mervill cried. "Thanks for your Miss Lampton—I can do without her friendship! I prefer hating her."

"You are so perverse and foolish and . . ." Michael paused ". . . and difficult."

"No, loving, you mean, loving, Michael—that's all I'm difficult about."

CHAPTER VIII

They were back in the valley again and splendid work was going on at the camp. Another two weeks' hard digging had done wonders, and Margaret and Michael had found each other again.

In the dawn, two mornings after the dance, when the mysterious figures, heralding the light, were abandoning themselves to their God on the desert sands, Mike had seen Margaret standing at her hut-door, watching, as he himself so often watched, for the glory which was of Aton to flood the desert with light. Meg's eyes the day before had told Michael that she was unhappy; he knew now that she had not slept.

While the white figures were still bent earthwards and the little streak of light was scarcely more than visible, Michael went to her and asked her forgiveness.

"Forgive me," he said. "I need forgiveness."

Meg took his hand. "I hate not being friends. Thank you."

"It made me miserable," he said.

"Then let's forget. I was stupid. This is all too big and great for such smallness." She indicated the coming of the unearthly light.

"Thy dawning, O Aton," Michael said.

Margaret smiled. "He was very far from us at Assuan."

"He was there. I stifled my consciousness of him, Meg."

"Don't," she said. "Let's go forward."

"I know what you mean," he said. "Regrets are weak, foolish."

"I don't want to bring the hotel at Assuan into this valley. Let's just watch the sun transform its infinite mystery into our waking, working, everyday world—if Egypt can be an everyday world."

"May I say Akhnaton's beautiful hymn to you? It is about the sunrise.
He must often have seen it just as we are seeing it now."

"Akhnaton's? Yes, do. How wonderful to think that he wrote hymns!"

Michael began the famous hymn. "'The world is in darkness, like the dead. Every lion cometh forth from his den; all serpents sting. Darkness reigns.'"

"We might substitute jackals," Margaret said gently.

"'When thou risest in the horizon . . . the darkness is banished. Then in all the world they do their work.

"'All trees and plants flourish, the birds flutter in their marshes, all sheep dance upon their feet.'"

"Oh," Margaret said delightedly, "how like it is to the hundred and fourth Psalm! Do you remember how David said: 'The trees of the Lord are full of sap. . . . Where the birds make their nests. . . . The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats'? I think that's how it goes. I love that Psalm."

"Yes," Michael said, "verse for verse, the idea is absolutely similar and the similes are strikingly alike. The next verse is just as much alike. Listen. . . . I am so glad you like it."

"First look," Margaret said, "at that light. Yes, now go on—I love hearing it."

"'The ships sail up stream and down stream alike. The fish in the river leap up before Thee and Thy rays are in the midst of the great sea. How manifold are Thy works. Thou didst create the earth according to Thy desire, men, all cattle, all that are upon the earth.'"

"How extraordinarily like!" Margaret said. "How do you account for it? I suppose it is still allowed that David wrote the Psalms? Did he live before Akhnaton or after him?" She laughed softly. "Don't scorn my ignorance. You see, I have kept my promise—I have read nothing at all on the subject."

"Akhnaton, you mean? Oh, before David, by about three hundred years. There are all sorts of theories on the subject. The commonest is that Akhnaton, having come of Syrian stock, on his mother's side, may have got his inspiration from some Syrian hymn, as David also may have done. I reject that theory. The whole of Akhnaton's beliefs and teachings prove the extraordinary originality of his ideas. He borrowed nothing; God was his inspiration."

"You are going to tell me about him, about his work?"

"Yes, soon, some day. Have you thought about him since?" Michael referred to the God of Whom Akhnaton was the manifestation, the interpreter. He always spoke of Akhnaton as a divine messenger.

His voice betrayed a sense of regret, of unworthiness. Yet in his heart he knew that, weak as he had been, he had not sinned against the spirit of Akhnaton, that he realized even more fully his watchword, "Living in Truth." Akhnaton's love for every created being because of their creator filled Michael's heart even more fully than it had done before. He had learned his own moral weakness, his own forgetfulness. Blame and criticism of even the natives' shortcomings seemed to him reserved for someone more worthy than himself. They had simply not yet seen the Light; their evolution was more tardy; they were less fortunate. Some day all men would be "Living in Truth." Akhnaton's dream would be realized. How impossible it is for our material selves to do without the help which is outside ourselves, that help which is our divine consciousness, Michael had learned over and over again. His lapses had not affected his beliefs. They were only parts of the struggle, the oldest struggle known to mankind, the struggle between Light and Darkness. Just as the Egyptians from the earliest days believed in the triumph of Osiris over Set, he knew that no thinking man could doubt the eventual triumph of all those who fight for the spiritual man.

"Yes, I have thought about him," Margaret said. "And last night I dreamed about him—my . . ." she paused ". . . wonderful visitor."

"What did you dream?" Michael said. "Do tell me."

The light was breaking over the valley—not the sun's light, the cold light of dawn. The "heat of Aton" was still withheld.

A blush which was invisible to Michael tinged Meg's clear skin. Her dream had been beautiful, vivid. It had illuminated her world again.

"It was nothing very coherent. I saw no vision, as I did before." Her words were spoken guardedly. "It was the lesson the dream revealed."

"I should like to know, Meg."

"A voice seemed to wake me. It spoke to me of you. I was to help you . . . you were struggling."

"You can help me," Mike said. "You have."

"It spoke of the oldest of all stories, the battle of light against darkness. It said that Egypt in the early days worshipped light; in the days which followed light was swallowed up in the worship of false gods."

"Osiris and Set—you know the legend—the fundamental ethics of all religions."

"I know a little about it," Margaret said. She paused. "Please go on . . . tell me everything."

"In dreams we are so vain, so wonderful . . . you know how it always is! The ego in us has unlimited sway. In my dream I dreamed that my friendship was to be 'light'; if I withdrew it, you would have darkness. What glorious vanity!"

"Oh, Meg, it's quite true! Will you give me back your sympathy?
I . . ." he hesitated, ". . . I am trying to be more worthy of it."

"We are friends," she said. "I was foolish and conceited, my dream made me see how foolish. I had no right to . . ."

He interrupted her. "Yes, you had . . . you weren't foolish. Your sensibilities told you what was absolutely true. . . . I would explain more if I could."

"No, don't explain—things are explained. I thought I should find you here; I wanted to begin the new day happily. My dream made me see so very clearly that the world is made up of those who sit in darkness and those who sit in light, that thoughts are things. My thoughts were unjust, unkind, so my world was unkind, unjust. I made it."

"The light which is Aton," Michael said.

"If we wish to enjoy happiness, we must sit in the light. We must make our own happiness."

"In the fullness and glory of Aton."

"God, I suppose you mean," Margaret said.

"The one and only God Whom every human being has striven to worship in his or her odd way ever since the world began. There is God in every man's heart. It doesn't a bit matter what His symbol may be. Some races of mankind have evolved higher forms of worship, some lower; their symbols are appropriate. But they are all striving for the one and same thing—to render worship to the Divine Creator, to sit in the Light of Aton."

"But the sun," Margaret said—she pointed to the fiery ball on the horizon—"I thought your divine Akhnaton was a sun-worshipper?"

"He worshipped our God, the Creator of all things of heaven or earth, even of our precious human sympathy, Meg, for nothing that is could be without Him, and to Akhnaton His symbol was the sun. The earlier Egyptians worshipped Ra, the great sun-god; Akhnaton brought divinity into his worship. He worshipped Aton as the Lord and Giver of Life, the Bestower of Mercy, the Father of the Fatherless. All His attributes were symbolized in the sun. Its rising and setting signified Darkness and Light; its power as the creative force in nature, Resurrection. It evolved mankind from the lower life and implanted the spirit of divinity in him through the Creator of all things created. The sun was God created, His symbol, His manifestation."

"Look," Margaret said, "look at it now—it is God, walking in the desert."

* * * * * *

For a little time they stood together, their material forms side by side.

* * * * * *

Michael's house-boy, with a deferential salaam, suddenly informed him that his bath had been waiting for him and was now cold.

Before Michael hurried off Margaret said, "Thank you for my first lesson in Akhnaton's worship." She held out her hands.

"We all worship as he did, all day long," he said, "when we admire the sun and the stars and the flowers, when we admire all that is beautiful, we are seeing God."

"I adore beauty," Margaret said, "but I forget that beauty is God.
You, like Akhnaton, are conscious of God first, the beauty He has made
afterwards. If there had been the text 'God is Beauty' as there is
'God is Love,' it might have helped us to understand."

"I forget him," Michael said, "you know how easily."

"It is far better to know and love, even if you are human and forget. . . ." she paused ". . . than always to sit in darkness, to sit outside the door."

"I don't see how any one can," Michael said. "It is all so exquisitely evident. The desolation must be so terrifying, like living in this lonely spot with no watch-dogs to keep off evil-doers. It takes great courage to live on one's own strength, one's own material self."

They had parted, Margaret going to her room, Michael to his tent. Freddy, who was almost dressed, saw two figures approaching, wrapped up in big coats.

"That's a good job!" he said. "The sunrise has made them friends again." He was out in the desert the next moment, hearing the roll-call of the workmen, who had all ranged themselves up in a line near the hut.

CHAPTER IX

One evening, some weeks later, when the trio, Margaret, Freddy and Michael, were busily engaged in sorting and cleaning the day's finds, which had been more than usually interesting, Margaret held up for inspection a tiny alabaster kohl-pot, which she had freed from the incrustations of thousands of years. It was exactly similar to a little green glass bottle which she had bought in the bazaar at Assuan, in which the modern Egyptian, but more especially the Coptic, women carry the kohl which they use for blacking their eyes and eyebrows. Margaret showed Freddy the bottle, which led to a discussion about the similarity of the customs of the modern Egyptians and those in the pictures in the tombs, whose decorations always reveal the more human and intimate side of the life of ancient Egypt than the decoration of the temples.

"They were as vain and fond of making up as any woman of to-day," Freddy said. "We find no end of recipes for cosmetics and hair-dyes and restorers. One popular pomade was made of the hoofs of a donkey, a dog's pad and some date-kernels, all boiled together in oil. It was supposed to stop the hair from falling out and restore its brilliancy. There is another, even more savoury, for hair-dying."

"Do you suppose they still use that receipt?" Michael said.

"I shouldn't wonder. Customs never die in Egypt—they have had the same superstitions and the same customs for thousands of years. The Copts have clung more jealously to them, of course. The Moslem invasion did a little to change some of them, but not many."

Margaret listened while Freddy explained how the Moslems, after the Arab invasion, behaved with regard to the festivals and superstitions of the pagans very much in the same way as the Early Christian church in Rome behaved with regard to the pagan festivities and superstitions—adapting them, as far as was possible, to the new religion, grafting on such things as the people would not or could not renounce. The wisdom of the custom was obvious. The new converts, who believed in one God Whose Prophet had come to knock down all graven images in the temples, were still allowed the protection and comfort of their personal amulets, which were powerful enough to protect them from every evil imaginable, or to bring them all the blessings their simple souls desired. Arab workmen, who believe that Allah wills all things, that whatsoever happens, it is his purpose, will flock round any soothsayer who professes to see into the future and do the most absurd things conceivable to keep off the evil eye. The eye of Horus is still their favourite amulet.

"Abdul professes to tell fortunes and see into the future. They do sometimes manage to hit off some wonderfully clever guesses," Freddy said. "Abdul has been curiously correct in a number of things he has foretold relating to this bit of work."

"What did he tell you about this excavation?"

"He didn't tell me—I overheard the workmen's chatter. He has worked them up to a pitch of absurd excitement."

"What sort of things has he foretold? Good or bad? What things have come true?"

"I forget the small points now. I really can't tell you. He predicts all sorts of extravagant things about the inside of the tomb, says he has seen visions of a wonderful figure of a queen, dressed as if for her bridal, and the place all glittering with gold and precious stones—the most superb tomb that has ever been opened."

"Oh!" Meg said excitedly. "I wonder if it will be?—if there will be any truth in it?"

"Tommy-rot!" Freddy said. "But the excitement's spread—the men are working like mad—never did so much good work before."

"May I talk to Abdul? I'd love to have my future told!"

"I'd rather you didn't—at least, I would rather the other workmen didn't know he had spoken to you. I don't like them to imagine that we believe in such things."

"Very well," Meg said. "I see what you mean."

"You are never wise to let the natives lose their respect for your disdain of spooks and superstitions. I never scoff at their fears and beliefs in every sort of imaginable supernatural power, but I like them to think that my religion places me above such terrors. We pray to our Christian God to protect us according to His will; they say five prayers to Allah daily, the one and only God, and at the same time at every hour of the day they perform countless acts and ceremonies to propitiate malign spirits and powers. They are a curious people—the best of them are very devout, but some of the most devout are not the best by any means."

"Do you mind if Michael sees the fortune-teller? It would be so interesting."

"He knows Abdul." Freddy looked at Mike. "It's different to letting one of our womenkind meddle in such things."

"Did the ancients believe in dreams?" Margaret said. Michael's eyes had spoken; he had seen the man.

"Don't you remember Joseph's dream?"

"Oh, of course!" Margaret said. "But Joseph seems a modern in this valley."

"The ancients looked upon dreams as 'revelations' from a world quite as real as that which we see about us when we are awake. They were sent by the gods and, according to the texts in the tombs, much desired."

Margaret's and Michael's eyes met. Her dream which had brought them together again had undoubtedly been sent by God.

There was an industrious silence for a little time, then Margaret asked, "Have you ever come across any traces of Akhnaton's religion in the tombs in this valley?"

An amused smile hovered round Freddy's mouth. It was obvious that
Margaret had caught something of Mike's enthusiasm for the heretic
Pharaoh.

"No, nothing of his religion," he said. "It is too far from his scene of action; his influence was almost local—it was a personal influence and died at his death. He was a man born before his time; the world was not ready for his doctrines—they were far above the people's heads."

"How do we know?" Mike said eagerly. "Surely God knows best when to send His messengers, when to reveal Himself?"

"Anyhow," Freddy said, "you know that when he died his teachings died too. The people who had professed his beliefs returned to their old gods. The one and only trace of Akhnaton's influence here is in his mother's tomb, where every sign of Aton worship has been chopped off the wall, every trace of his symbols obliterated. Akhnaton had no doubt introduced them into his mother's tomb; she had shared his beliefs, which had not, of course, become extreme at the time of her death."

"Truth never dies," Mike said. "His beautiful city was abandoned, his temples neglected and overthrown, his people again became the victims of the money-making, political priesthood of Amon-Ra. But who can say that the spirit of Akhnaton is dead to-day? Who can tell that the seed of his mission bore no fruit? Thought never dies."

"As you like. Anyhow, even before he was buried—embalming was a lengthy process—his religion as a state religion, as anything at all of any influence, or as a power in the land, was doomed."

"You don't admire him as Mike does," Margaret said. "He seems to have been almost as perfect as a human being could be—the first living being to realize the divinity of God."

"As a religious dévoué, he was, as you say, almost a saint. He spent his life throwing pearls before swine—you might as well try to make a charity-school class see the beauty of Virgil in the original—and letting his kingdom go to rack and ruin."

"Oh," Margaret said, "you didn't tell me that." Her eyes searched
Mike's. "Did he let Egypt go to pieces?"

"He was anti-war, as I am," Mike said, "as all lovers of God and of mankind ought to be. He was perhaps foolish in his belief that if the world could be converted to the great religion of Aton, which meant perfect love for everything that God had created and absolute reverence for everything because He created it, then there would be no wars. If God is love and we believe in God, how can we kill each other? Akhnaton's idea of the duty of a king was the improvement of mankind. He tried to give men a new understanding of life and of God. The moral welfare of the human race was more to him than the aggrandizement of its emperors."

"I've no patience with all that," Freddy said. "He inherited a magnificent kingdom; he let it dwindle almost to ruin. If you could read some of the letters of Horemheb, the commander-in-chief of his army, begging him to send reinforcements to Syria, imploring him to realize the danger that menaced Asia, you would feel as impatient as I do with his mission work at Tel-el-Amarna, his cult of flowers and his new-fangled art."

"A man can't go against his own conscience. He didn't approve of war. It's an interesting fact that the only one of the old gods he recognized was Maît—he built a fine new temple to the goddess of truth at Tel-el-Amarna. He carried his enthusiasm too far," Mike said, "I grant that, but from his point of view these things were of little account. If he could have turned the heart of Egypt from the worship of false gods, if he could have imparted unto the minds of men the wonder and the love of God, all else, he thought, would follow after."

"A fanatic!" Freddy said.

"So were all saints."

"'For what shall it profit a man,'" Meg said, "'if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?'" Her voice was significant. "In his day, Christ was as great a fanatic, if you like to look at things from that point of view. Fancy fasting forty days and forty nights in the wilderness, calling upon men to leave their work and follow him, preaching against the rich! How you would have scoffed at him!"

"If Akhnaton hadn't been a king, if he had merely been a prophet and a teacher, he'd have been all right. But just you listen, Meg," Freddy said, "while I read you what a modern writer says about him, and he is an intense admirer of the character of Akhnaton. This is how he describes what the messengers must have felt when they hurried back to Egypt to the new capital of the fanatical king at Tel-el-Amarna, bearing entreaties from the commander-in-chief of the army in Syria to send reinforcements to help to deliver his distant kingdom from the oppression of her enemies." Freddy found the book and opened it. "Here it is—listen to this: 'The messengers have arrived at the City of the Horizon,' as Akhnaton called his new capital, 'Their hearts are full of the agony of Syria. From the beleaguered cities which they had so lately left, there came to them the bitter cry for succour, and it was not possible to drown that cry in words of peace, nor in the jangle of the septrum or the warbling of pipes. Who, thought the waiting messengers, could resist that piteous call? The city weeps and her tears are flowing. Who could sit idle in the City of the Horizon, when the proud empire, won with the blood of the noblest soldiers of the great Thothmes, was breaking up before their eyes? What mattered all the philosophies in the world, and all the gods in heaven, when Egypt's great dominions were being wrested from her? The splendid Lebanon, the white kingdoms of the sea, Askalon and Ashdod, Tyre and Sidon, Simgra and Byblos, the hills of Jerusalem, Kadesh and the great Orontes, the fair Jordan, Turip, Aleppo and distant Euphrates . . . what counted a creed against these? God, the Truth? The only god was He of the Battles, who had led Egypt into Syria; the only truth the doctrine of the sword, which had held her there for so many years.'"

Freddy turned over the leaves of the book which he had been reading from, and began again quoting from Weigall's Life of Akhnaton.

"'Love! One stands amazed at the reckless idealism, the beautiful folly of this Pharaoh who, in an age of turbulence, preached a religion of peace to seething Syria. Three thousand years later mankind is still blindly striving after these same ideals in vain.'"

"How pathetic!" Margaret said. "And yet . . ." she hesitated, ". . . the God of Battles . . . Akhnaton's was the God of Love, the God of everlasting Mercy."

"What right had Egypt ever to go into Syria?" Mike said. "It sounds fine and one can grow enthusiastic over these beautiful old names and visualize a million greatnesses that Akhnaton was resigning, but what right had Egypt in Syria? The right of might, the right of the stronger against the weaker—Prussia's might against Poland, Spain's might against Flanders, any large country's might against a weaker, the right of armies, the right of the greed of monarchs! Akhnaton believed in God, and to his thinking war could not go hand-in-hand with a love for all that God had created."

"Get out, Mike!" Freddy said. "You'll get on to Ireland next—I know him, Meg!"

"I agree with him in a way," Meg said. "To give people the love of God and the proper sense of beauty, the enjoyment of all that God has made for their good, in the best way, which was surely the way of Akhnaton, seems better than spending the kingdom's wealth and brains in maintaining armies to kill human beings and invade new territories."

"The great question," Freddy said, "is nationality. If you don't care who wipes you out, or to what country or king you belong, well and good, live the idealized life. Someone will think quite differently and gobble you up. If Akhnaton hadn't died, there would soon have been no Egypt, no Egyptian peoples."

"They'd have been quite as happy," Mike said, "for in those days the kings actually owned their empires, they were their own property to do what they liked with. The people fought for their King, not for their country. An absolute monarch was an absolute monarch, the kingdom was his to do as he liked with."

"How was it saved? Was it ever as great again?" Meg asked.

"It was saved by his son dying almost directly after he did and Horemheb, the great commander-in-chief, at last got his way. He persuaded the reigning Pharaoh, who had married Akhnaton's daughter, to himself lead an expedition and go into Asia. After that Pharaoh's death, and the death of the next one, Ay, Akhnaton's father-in-law, who reigned for a short time—and who, to do him justice, tried to remain faithful to Akhnaton's ideal Aton worship—the great warrior and commander-in-chief, Horemheb, was raised to the throne. He brought Egypt back to its old conditions. Do you care to hear what Weigall says about him?—how completely he wiped out the 'idealism of the dreamer'?" Freddy found the passage he wanted. "'The neglected shrines of the old gods once more echoed with the chants of the priests through the whole land of Egypt . . . he fashioned a hundred images. . . . He established for them daily offerings every day. All the vessels of their temples were wrought of silver and gold. He equipped them with priests and with ritual priests, and with the choicest of the army. He transferred to them lands and cattle, supplied with all necessary equipment. By these gifts to the neglected gods, Horemheb was striving to bring Egypt back to its natural condition and with a strong hand he was guiding the country from chaos to order, from fantastic Utopia to the solid Egypt of the past. He was, in fact, the preacher of sanity, the chief apostle of the Normal.'"

"It was in his reign," Michael said, "that Akhnaton's fair city at Tel-el-Amarna was utterly abandoned; his beautiful decorations, which were intended to illustrate to the people the beauty of God in Nature, were ruthlessly destroyed. His body, which had been laid in the far-away cliffs behind his city, was removed and placed in his mother Queen Thi's tomb in this valley."

"What a tragic life!" Margaret said. She was thinking of the sad face as she had seen it in her vision. Did any one understand him? Freddy evidently understood Horemheb, the apostle of the Normal, who scorned the fantastic Utopia of Akhnaton, much better.

"He was very much beloved and probably as much understood by a few as most pioneers have been. It was in his father-in-law's tomb that his beautiful hymn was discovered, for he was one of his devoted followers in Akhnaton's lifetime."

Margaret smiled. "The beautiful hymn you said to me that morning at dawn, Mike?"

"The same," Michael said. "I have often thought of it in connection with St. Francis' Canticle to the Sun."

"It is difficult," Margaret said, "to know how far wars and empire-building, and everything that makes for worldly-ambition and encourages the vanity of monarchs, are compatible with the true meaning of the words 'God is Love,' with the true conception of Christ's doctrines."

"Which were Akhnaton's," Michael said. "He did all in his power to raise the morals of his people. He was the first king to recognize the higher rights of women, to insist on the reverence of womanhood. He brought his queen forward on every public occasion, and that had never been heard of before. He tried to introduce a new ideal of home-life. He was a model father and husband. He thought of nothing but the moral welfare of his people and of their happiness. He was willing to lose his kingdom for the saving of their souls."

"And yet he was a bad king?" Margaret said.

"He had none of the qualities of a ruler or an empire-builder," Freddy said.

"Damn empire-building!" Mike said. "If people would only stick to their own natural territory and not go straying into other peoples!"

"I wonder what you'd do if Germany strayed into ours? Sit down and let them walk over you?"

"I'd do what you'd do," Mike said, with a flash of Irish anger in his eyes—"kill every damned one of them!"

"There you are!" Freddy said hotly.

"No, I am not," Michael said, "for, as I said, what we've got, let us keep—England's possessions no more belong to Germany than my soul does. But some of our wars—well!" he laughed. "Empires are built up in rum ways, ways I don't agree with, but we won't do any good by handing them over now to feed the vanity of the Kaiser. But the Egyptians had enough land in Africa to expand in, there was no need for their warrioring in strange lands."

"Let's chuck the subject," Freddy said good-naturedly, "and stick to work. I want to get these boxes cleared out to-night and we never do good work while we argue."

"I can't help smiling," Margaret said. "It's really too funny to think that we've got quite cross and snappy over the character of a man who lived more than three thousand years ago."

"Oh, we often do that," Michael said. "You should have heard about a dozen of us quarrelling some time ago over hair-splitting theories on a much less human subject, one belonging to pre-dynastic times!"

"I wish Aunt Anna could see us, Freddy, sitting in this funny hut in this lonely desert valley, cleaning little objects and broken fragments of things that were buried three thousand years ago and fighting over a mummy, as she would say!"

Margaret had been working busily, so her tin cigarette-box, which had been quite full early in the evening with all sorts of small blue beads and tiny bits of pottery, was almost empty. She had been able to enjoy and follow all her brother's remarks about Akhnaton, as Michael had told her a great deal about him. In the three weeks which had passed since their visit to Assuan there had been no return of the vision, so she had insisted upon Michael telling her all that he could about Akhnaton. She felt anxious to understand something about the king whose personality interested and influenced him so greatly.

Michael had by no means banished the vision from his thoughts. He was convinced that Margaret had been privileged to see a vision of Akhnaton—indeed, the more he dwelt on his message, the more he felt sure that it was the beginning of a new phase in his life.

Over and over again he had repeated to himself the message: "Tell him to carry on my work."

Was he doing any work at the present time to help forward mankind? He was enjoying himself in a delightful way and to a certain extent he was assisting Freddy; but such assistance as he gave could easily be given by another; he was not essential.

There was only one man whom he had a longing to consult and that was Michael Ireton. Since his marriage with Hadassah Lekejian, a Syrian girl of great beauty and strength of character, Michael Ireton had given his time and brains and money to the founding of settlements in various parts of Egypt for the raising of the moral status of women in Egypt. He was a practical man of the world, with a charming personality. His wife was one of the most cultivated and fascinating women Michael had ever met.

If he confided to Freddy his growing desire to do the work which he felt was the work he was called upon to do, Freddy would only look upon it as a fresh example of his drifting character.

The subject of Akhnaton had been dropped and perfect good humour was restored again. Michael's thoughts had soared into what Freddy called his "Kingdom of Idle Dreams." Freddy's thoughts were very practical, although they related to the history of a lost civilization and to the unearthing of objects which the sands of the desert had concealed for thousands of years. He and the workers knew that the next few days would be days of intense excitement.

So far Freddy's surmises had been correct. The chaff and scoffing which he had so good-naturedly put up with from the fellow-excavators who had been to visit the camp were likely to be turned the other way. He had little or no doubt left that he had struck an important tomb, probably the tomb of the Pharaoh for whom he was looking.

In a few days the big shaft which led to the mouth of the tomb would be cleared. Tons upon tons of debris had been thrown out of it; the work had been stupendous. The two hundred native workers and the other more experienced diggers had worked unremittingly. Freddy was living in a high state of nervous tension. The news had spread far and wide that "Mistrr Lampton" had discovered a new tomb and one which presumably had never been entered. Freddy knew that this news would spread, would be carried on the wings of the morning in a manner which no European can ever discover. Means of transmitting news is one of the secrets which no native in Africa, North or South, has ever divulged to an European. There are hundreds of theories on the subject. Do pigeons act as carriers? Some people suggest this theory. Or is it by some wireless method which has been known to all primitive races and only lately discovered by scientific scholars of the West?

So far no one has fathomed the mystery. But Freddy knew that the news would be sent far and wide, and that every seeker after "antikas" would be prowling round the opened site. Directly the tomb was opened, it would be the Mecca of every tomb-plunderer. He had sent word for a guard of police to be ready to come when he summoned them.

When the tomb was opened he would have to prevent anyone from going into it until a photographer had arrived from Cairo to photograph it and until after the Supervisor-General of the Monuments of Upper Egypt had arrived on the spot and inspected it.

He could feel the excitement of the natives, who have absolutely no sense of honour where "antikas" are concerned. It has proved almost an impossible work to convince them that the excavators and the scholars who are engaged in the work of archaeology in Egypt, or the wealthy man who has paid for the expenses of a camp, are not one and all "out on the make." They are convinced that these eager, enthusiastic scholars are just the same as they are, interested in it from a pecuniary point of view. The curios and wonders which they dig out of the bowels of the earth put gold into their pockets.

Freddy's Ras, or native overseer, was a highly intelligent man, who had a genuine appreciation for antiques—he was a clever hand at faking them and did a good business with tourists—but at heart even he doubted the sincerity and single-minded purpose of the British School of Archaeology in Egypt, and "Mistrr Lampton's" absolute clean-handedness in the business.

Freddy had never left the camp for more than half an hour since the excavation had become "hot." It was a strenuous time.

Naturally Margaret's thoughts were centred and engrossed in her brother's work. She could scarcely hold her soul in patience while the deep shaft was being cleared, a long and tiresome job. But at last they could count the time by days before the entrance to the tomb would be reached.

The little store-room in the hut was packed full of boxes which held the small finds. Margaret's work for some days past had been to piece together (Freddy had taught her how) the tiny fragments of a smashed vase which her brother had found. The pieces were all there, for it had been discovered in a little hollow in the sand. The conventional decoration was of an unique type; and on it was traced a branch of a plant which seemed to Freddy to resemble with extraordinary exactness a branch of the Indian fig, the prickly pear, so familiar to all travellers in Southern Italy. As the Indian fig was not introduced into Egypt until the Middle Ages, or so it had generally been supposed, for it was not indigenous, Freddy was anxious to find out if the decoration on the vase was going to prove that after all it was known to the Egyptians long before it was brought over from America. He also held that there was something in the theory which has of late become current that camels may have been known and used in Egypt from very early times, that their absence in all pictorial art in temples and tombs may be owing to the fact that the Egyptians divided animals into two classes, the clean and the unclean; that neither into temples nor into tombs could the unclean be introduced in any form of art whatsoever.

These were the sort of discussions with which Margaret had already grown familiar. She felt that in piecing together and sketching as accurately as possible the cactus-like branch of the little plant engraved on the broken vase, she was actually helping to forge a link in one of the minute chains of Egyptian archaeology.

Her brother's memory amazed her and his intelligence stimulated her. He had been such a boy at home. Egypt had converted him into a strong serious scholar. His fair head, bent over his work, with the lamplight shining on it, was so dear to her that impulsively she put her long strong fingers on the glittering hair; she longed to kiss it.

"Dear old boy!" she said. "Isn't it all just too exciting? Isn't life thrilling? Isn't it lovely to be alive?"

Freddy did not look up. "Some girls," he said, "mightn't think this being very much alive—the sorting out of bits of broken rubbish, thrown out of a tomb which has been forgotten for two or three thousand years. Did you ever think you'd care to know whether a prickly pear was indigenous to Egypt or was not? Or whether canopic jars had their origin in family grocers' jars being lent by the head of the house to hold the intestines of some dear-departed?"

Meg laughed. "It is all too odd, but being in it, and actually knowing that we are going to see into that tomb in a few days and discover who the king was who was buried there, and all about his personal and family affairs, and be able to touch the jewels he was buried with, it's too interesting for words, I think!"

"I hope you won't be disappointed. It may have been robbed."

"But you don't think so?"

"No, I don't—not at present. There was a tomb opened at one of the camps, not long ago, which told a tragic story of the end of robbery and plunder. The roof had fallen in while the burglar was busy unwrapping the cloths from the dead mummy. He was evidently trying to get at the heart-scarab, I suppose, and at the jewels which the windings held in their place. He had been smothered, taken in the act. Probably he had left his fellow-plunderers at the entrance; the roof may have looked unsafe, but he had hoped to collect all the jewels and scarabs before it gave way. Fate played him a nasty trick. The roof caved in, and we have secured all the jewels he had collected together and have learned a lesson of what must have often happened. The mummy's body was, of course, still perfect. Of the intruder only bones were visible and some fragments of his clothes. Things keep for ever in these hermetically-sealed Egyptian tombs, where neither rust nor moth ever entered in, but where thieves did break through and steal."

"How thrilling!" Margaret said. "How did you guess that the skeleton was the skeleton of a robber? I suppose as he never returned, his friends just went off and left him?"

"By the scattered jewels and the way the mummy was lying. Why should a skeleton be inside a royal tomb? Why should the mummy be out of its coffin and partly unrobed? We have actually found before now plans which the sextons and the guardians of the tombs had made for themselves, of all the tombs in the cemetery which was in their care. They knew how they could be entered one from another. Of course, this valley is different. The tombs are isolated and carefully hidden. It was never a public cemetery."

"Was Akhnaton's tomb intact? Had it been robbed?"

Freddy laughed. "Back again to the tabooed subject?"

Meg laughed too. "We shan't fight this time, I promise."

"His city and palace and tomb were utterly desolated, but his mummy had been taken away from his own tomb, before it was desolated, and brought to his mother's."

"Oh, you told me—I forgot." Into Meg's mind came again the words spoken by the sad voice, "My earthly body was brought to my mother's tomb in this valley."

When the night's work was completed, Meg voted that they should sit for a few minutes in front of the hut and try to get the "mummy-shell" and the microbes of Pharaonic diseases out of their nostrils. Freddy had never allowed them to sleep right out in the open, much as they had wished it. It was not safe, even with the dogs and his trustworthy house-boys. He would not hear of it; and he was wise.

Gladly he agreed to refreshing their lungs with the beautiful night air. Indeed, they were all three so happy together and there was so much to talk about and discuss, that bed seemed a bore. Physically tired as they were, owing to the nervous excitement in the atmosphere of their day's surroundings, sleep seemed very far off.

"Just half an hour, Freddy," Margaret said, as she threw herself down on a long lounge chair, and clasping her hands behind her head, gazed up to the heavens. "How glorious it is!" she said. "I'm so happy."

They all three lighted cigarettes and smoked in silence. Freddy was as happy as Meg; Mike was restless.

At the end of the half-hour Meg got up and said, "Who'd exchange this for a city? Freddy, you ought to get to bed—you're dead tired, really."

He rose reluctantly. "I suppose I must." His thoughts were on the morrow's work. If the tomb was going to be a really big thing, it meant a lot more to him than Meg understood. He was very young; he had not as yet struck any remarkable find; he had his reputation to make. His theories had caused much comment.

"I could never live in a city again," he said. "This life has made it impossible. And the odd thing is that it has made cities seem to me the loneliest, most desolate places in the world. I never feel in touch with anyone. Even the other night at the ball, jolly as it was, I never once talked to anyone about anything that really interested me. I never felt that anyone would understand a single thing about all that is my real life. I suppose everyone feels the same—that their real selves are lost in crowds."

Michael and Margaret looked at each other. They had experienced the feeling; they had lost each other. In the valley they had come back to the things of Truth.

"You know I always abhorred town-life," Mike said, "and all its artificiality and rottenness and needless accumulation of unnecessary things."

"Brains congregate in cities, all the same," Freddy said, "if you can only strike them. We'd get too one-sided here, too lost in the past. It's never wise to let your hobbies and work exclude all other interests."

"I begin to think there is no past," Meg said. "Time lost itself in Egypt. Three thousand years mean nothing. The people who lived and ruled before Moses was born are more alive and real to-day for us than the events of yesterday's evening paper. I think I have learned just a tiny bit of what infinity means."

"Or rather, you have learned that you haven't," Mike said. "By the time you have discovered that three thousand years are just yesterday, you have grasped the truth of the fact that no mortal mind can conceive the meaning of the word infinity."

"Have you ever seen a ghost in Egypt, Freddy?" Margaret said, irrelevantly.

"No, never," he said.

"Did the ancients believe in them?"

Freddy was locking up the hut. "We never come across any writing or pictures to show us that they did, so I don't think it's likely. They have told us most things about themselves and about what they saw and feared."

"I wonder?" Margaret said meditatively. "I wonder if they did or didn't?"

"Of course they believed," Michael said, "that the soul of a man, the anima, at the death of the body, flew to the gods. It came back at intervals to comfort the mummy."

"That's nothing to do with what we call ghosts," Freddy said, "and no one but the mummy is supposed to have been visited by it. It took the form of a bird with human hands and head; it was called the ba."

"Oh, my friendly ba!" Meg said. "I have just been reading all about it—in Maspero's book you see pictures of it sitting on the chest of the mummy."

"That's it," Freddy said. "You're getting on. But as for real ghosts, there's no record of them—not that I know of. Good-night," he said, "I'm off."

"Good-night," Meg said, "and the best of luck to tomorrow's dig."

For a moment Michael and Meg stood together. "I know what is in your heart," she said. "I begin to think that Egypt is making practical me quite psychic."

"I feel I ought to be up and doing. I believe there is work I can do—I believe it is the work I can do best."

"You only can judge," Meg said.

"I have always maintained that a man should devote himself to the work he can do best, no matter how unpractical or how unremunerative it may seem to others. He must be himself, he must work from the inside."

"You are doing good work here."

"Not my work—another's."

"I can't advise. I know you must judge."

"It means leaving this valley if I do it."

"Oh," Meg said, "not yet? Not until the tomb is opened, anyhow?"

"No," he said, "I'll wait for that. I want to see Ireton—I'm going to see him to-morrow when I go to Luxor for Freddy."

"Are you going?" she said. "I didn't know."

"Yes," he said. "He wants a lot done and he can't leave the dig."

"No, he can't." Meg paused; in her heart a fear had suddenly leapt up. The soft, delicately-tinted woman on the balcony at Assuan stood out before her as plainly as the luminous figure of Akhnaton had done. She was at Luxor! Two letters had arrived from Luxor for Mike in a woman's handwriting.

"I will see Michael Ireton," he repeated. "His work is magnificent; so is his wife's. His work is amongst the men."

"In their settlements, you mean?"

"Yes, amongst the Copts, most particularly."

"It will be sad to break up our trio," she said. "We are so happy." She held out her hand. "Good-night. I was to help, not to retard—I must remember my dream."

"Good-night." Mike grasped her hand. "You are part of the light.
Keep close to me when I am in Luxor tomorrow."

CHAPTER X

Michael not only had to go to Luxor on business for Freddy, but to Cairo also. He had gone willingly, because he knew that someone had to go, and it gave him immense gratification to be able to help his friend in this time of intense anxiety.

It was absolutely essential that as little time as possible should elapse between the opening of the tomb and the arrival of the photographer and the Chief Inspector. Things which have remained intact for thousands of years in the even, dry temperature of an Egyptian tomb, crumble and fade away like the fabric of our dreams when they are exposed to the open air.

It might be that there would be nothing inside it worth all the trouble and the arrangements which had to be made; on the other hand, the Arab seer's vision might be verified. So far, no trace of burglars, either ancient or modern, had been discovered. Not infrequently the finding of an Arab copper coin, or some disk made of modern metal, an amulet similar to those worn by the ancients, but made of a composition unknown to them, will indicate to an excavator that the tomb has been visited, and probably violated, by modern thieves.

Everything when speaking of time in Egypt is comparative. These intruders may have dropped the metal talisman or coin centuries and centuries ago, soon after the Arab invasion.

Michael had done all his business and was well-content to spend the remainder of his day in mediaeval Cairo. He shunned the European quarter, with its expensive hotels and hybrid Western civilization. He preferred the narrow dark streets of the poor natives. In the East poverty has at least its picturesque side; in the East, as in Italy, Our Lady of Poverty has her shrines, not her hovels. In London, he asked himself, could Browning have sung "God's in His heaven—All's right with the world!"?

In London so much is wrong with the world that the true meaning of Christ's words, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven," seems obvious. To Michael Amory the world was beautiful; its systems of laws and customs were all wrong. The misunderstanding of countless human beings, one with another, through their lack of Love, through their obliviousness of God, made a whirlpool of his reasoning powers.

Mike had talked matters over with Michael Ireton, who had allowed him to unburden his full heart. His ideas and plans were quite unformed. All that he was now certain of was the fact that he would never settle down to any profession or career which would mean only the furthering of his own worldly interests.

"The clear voice prevents me," he said. "And the fact is, I don't care a rap about my future position—it can look after itself. I want to work as you are working, even if I prove a failure. I want to get something of this off my chest." He laughed. "It's all so difficult to express, and so easy to see, isn't it? Of course, I know that one man can't set the wrong in the world right, but each man can do what his right self advises. Our right self is never wrong."

"Hadassah helped me," Michael Ireton said, "and life has been worth twice what it was before. I agree with you—we must lead our own lives according to our own ideals, not according to the world's."

"Most people think me a fool," Michael said, "simply a rotter and a drifter, just because I can't settle down to work at a career of my own, while the world's burden is booming in my ear."

"Think things well over," Hadassah said. "Don't rush into plans which may prove a disappointment. Let your ideas materialize. You are never really idle—you will be sending thought-waves out into the world; they will bear fruit. Thought never dies; for good or for evil, it is everlasting."

"But I have been thinking—or drifting, as Lampton says, just idly drifting, for what seems to me like ages."

"Drifting closer to the Light," Hadassah said. "It has all been in order, it has all been a part of the Guiding Power."

"Do you think so? I wish I knew. Lampton thinks I've no ambition. I have, of a sort, but it's not of a money-making kind, it's not going to make my name or what you could call a career. I want to teach people how to live, and I don't know how to do it myself."

"I understand," Ireton said. "There's something out here, in the simplicity of desert life and the East generally, that lessens our wants. The fruits of hard labour are not so necessary as in England; the flesh-pots of Egypt are in the sunshine. If you have just enough to get along with, here in the East, and have cultivated tastes, life can be wonderfully beautiful. Poverty need never mean degradation—in fact, it has its advantages."

"That's it!" Michael Amory said. "I want to let people know how wonderfully beautiful life can be, even without wealth and worldly power, and why it is beautiful. I want them to realize the essence of things, to let those poor, crowded, degraded wretches in London know the sweetness of work in God's open spaces. I feel that I must do my little bit in helping things forward. I want to let in a few chinks of light. . . ."

Hadassah, oddly enough, finished his quotation from "Pippa Passes":
"You want to give them eyes to see that

"'The year's at the Spring,
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hillside's dew-pearled:
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn;
God's in His heaven—
All's right with the world!'"

Michael Ireton suggested that he should go off for a time into the desert and find himself. "There's nothing else so helpful," he said. "I've tried it." Hadassah's eyes met her husband's. She understood; she remembered.

And so Michael Amory left them strengthened and helped, not so much by their advice as by their understanding. Hadassah had charmed him, as she charmed everyone who met her. Her happiness as the wife of the Englishman who had scorned the gossiping tongues of Cairo by marrying her, and her pride in the young Nicholas, their son, who was just learning to walk, made Michael Amory a little envious. Michael Ireton's home and life seemed almost ideal. This wealthy, happy couple lived in the world and yet not for the world; they had discovered the true meaning of life.

Michael's thoughts were brimful of Hadassah and her husband, her beauty and the romance of their marriage, the details of which were familiar to him, as he pushed his way through the labyrinth of native streets in mediaeval Cairo.

After the silence of the desert, the noise was terrific—the shouts of the water-carriers, the yells of the native drivers of the swaying cabs, as they dashed at a reckless pace through the struggling and idling crowds. It was the most crowded hour of the day; the native town was wide awake. Camels laden with immense burdens of sugar-canes brushed the foot passengers almost off the narrow sideway; small boys, with large black eyes and small white takiyehs, darted in and out with brass trays piled high with little enamelled glass bowls.

Michael longed to close his ears with his fingers, but had he attempted to do so, a donkey, carrying terracotta water-jars of an ancient and unpractical shape, or a portly, high-stomached Turk would assuredly have robbed him of his balance.

He drifted on in a semi-conscious state of all that was going on around him, hating the noise, but enjoying every now and then the feast of colour which some group of strangely-mixed races presented. More than once, in the midst of all this noise and clamour, he saw a devout Moslem alone with his God. Before all the world, he was praying in absolute solitude. His mind had created perfect silence.

And so Michael drifted on. Only his subconscious self was leading him to his destination. He was going to a court of peace, to a strange friend who had taught him much simple philosophy and beauty, an African whose acquaintance he had made two years before, when he was in Gondokoro. Michael had saved the African's life by giving him some pecuniary assistance and carrying him on his own camel to the nearest village. He had come across him while he was on his journey which he performed on foot—from the heart of Africa to the university of el-Azhar in Cairo.

Since his youth, this old man had saved up money for the journey. It had been the ambition and the desire of his life to study in the great university of el-Azhar, the most important Moslem university in the world. His money had all been stolen from him, when Michael's servant found him. When he told his master of the condition the poor creature was in, a state of semi-starvation, Michael had taken him to the nearest village and there paid for a doctor to attend to him, and had supplied him with sufficient money to greatly mitigate the fatigue and suffering of his long pilgrimage to Cairo.

The journey had, of course, not been of such a hopeless character as might be supposed, for in every Moslem village there is a rest-house with free food for poor travellers; but even so, Michael knew that the distances between the desert villages are often enormous, and that they only supplied the food for the period of rest which the pilgrim needed.

Eight months later, when Michael was in England, he heard through the 'Ulama of the riwak in el-Azhar to which he belonged by nationality, that the old man had arrived and that he was now living the life of a mystic and a recluse. In a beautiful imagery of words, he had begged the 'Ulama to send his gratitude and thanks to the Englishman by whom, God, in His everlasting mercy, had sent him relief.

On Michael's return to Egypt the next year, almost the first thing which he had done on reaching Cairo was to go to el-Azhar and inquire at the ancient abode of peace if he could see his old friend. He had been admitted and exceptional courtesy had been extended to him. He was an unbeliever and a despised Christian, yet it had been through his act of charity that one of Allah's children had been nursed back to life and enabled to give his last years to the study of the Koran. He had been allowed to visit the old man from time to time.

To-day, as he walked through the noisy streets and smelt the obnoxious smells coming from an infinite variety of Oriental foods and customs, he longed to be back in the quiet valley, to feel the golden sand once more under his feet, to see Margaret's eyes smile their welcome. If he had caught the midday train, he would have been far away from Cairo by now. Yet something had led him to the heart of Islam, to that strange and unworldly seat of ancient learning. The very meaning of the word Islam suggests the atmosphere of the place—resignation, self-surrender.

When at last he arrived at the gates and was admitted into the splendour of the spacious court, his heart was lifted up. Its ancient dignity, its divine sense of calm and, above all, the sonorous sounds of the Moslems chanting their suras of the Koran, intoxicated his senses. As St. Augustine was intoxicated with God, so Michael was intoxicated with the spirit of Islam.

He knew that at certain times—during Moslem festivals, for instance—fanaticism often ran so high in this, the greatest of all Moslem centres, that it would be dangerous for a Christian to set foot inside the courtyard gate. It made him glow with pleasure that he, by his little act of love—or charity, as it is less pleasantly termed—was permitted to enter the courtyard at almost any time. This, of course, he would not do; the 'Ulama had given him permission, but he would not take advantage of his gracious offer.

To this richly-endowed university students come from all parts of the world, merely to study the interpretations of problematical passages in the Koran—poor students from India and China, wealthy citizens from Tunis, delicate-featured Malays from the Straits Settlements and negroes from Central Africa.

In the courts of el-Azhar these children of Allah become brothers; their united flag is the green banner of Islam; their nationality is Islam. This, Michael felt, was what religion ought to do for mankind. He tiptoed softly along, winding his way through the devout groups of students, until he reached a deep colonnade, supported by antique columns of great beauty, columns which had probably come from ancient Coptic churches, from Christian churches built in Old Cairo long before Islam was preached in Egypt. The colonnade was dark and almost cool after the open court, where the sun was blazing down upon the groups of picturesque worshippers and students, who seemed to be totally oblivious of its heat. Some elderly men were merely meditating. It was a wonderful sight, gracious and solemn and mysterious. The concentration of many of the worshippers on God was so strong that they seemed to see Him with their eyes; it was written on their faces; they looked as if they actually belonged to God.

Filled with the religious spell of the place, Michael wound his way through the different class-rooms into which the colonnade was divided, class-rooms which so little resembled the class-rooms of his own school or Oxford, that unless he had known what was going on, it would not have dawned on him that the various professors and teachers were delivering their lectures and instructing their scholars. The divisions of the class-rooms were merely an unwritten law; there was no boundary-line. Here and there groups of students, seated on the floor of the immense colonnade, which was supported on the inner side by columns of superb proportions, were waiting for their masters. Here and there a professor had already arrived; he was standing close to a column with his pupils grouped round him, just as the village-children surrounded their native teacher in a desert school.

Out of the eleven thousand pupils who attend the university every year not one of them would receive any instruction which would enable him to earn his living, or take his place in the struggle for wealth and power in the ordinary world of mankind. Devotion to Islam, and a desire to enter into a fuller understanding of God through the teachings of the Koran, alone brought them together from far and near.

Michael knew his way and presently he found himself in the residential quarter of the university and outside a partition which divided the small bare room of the man he had come to see from that of his fellow-students. The room or cell was empty, except for one praying-mat and a shelf, which was close to the floor. On it was a copy of the Koran and some religious books bound in paper. In the wall of this narrow living-room there was an opening which led into another cell; a tall man would have had to bend almost double to pass under it. The small recess served as a bedroom.

Michael gently pulled a bell, whose chain hung against the iron grating which fronted the humble abode. As it sounded, an emaciated figure appeared under the arched aperture and a sonorous voice cried out in Arabic, "Peace be with you."

Michael, who knew that this Moslem greeting is reserved for all true believers, for members of the Islamic brotherhood, that it is rarely, if ever, offered to Christians, thought that the old man had not seen him, that his gracious salutation was for one of his own faith. He did not venture to return it in the prescribed Moslem fashion, "On you be peace and the mercy of God and His Blessing." He merely waited for a few moments, until the bent figure stood upright, and the dark eyes in the thin face met his own.

"It is you, O my son. I have long looked for you."

Michael's heart warmed with happiness. Then the Moslem greeting had been for him. He felt that peace was with him.

"I seek your counsel, O my father."

"May Allah counsel me and bring you prosperity." A lean arm, a mere bone covered with a sun-tanned skin, reached for a key which was hanging from a nail in the wall. Without speaking, he unlocked the gate. Michael noticed the fleshlessness of the fingers and wrist.

"Enter, my son, if it so please you to honour my humble abode."

Michael entered and waited in silence, until the old African had slowly and carefully locked the door again.

"To you, O my son, my dwelling-place seems empty and bare; to me it is filled with the treasures of paradise, the sweet fragrance of white jasmine."

"I understand," Michael said.

"My son," the old man said, "it is because you understand that I am here, in this little room, glorified by the presence of Allah, made beautiful by His exceeding great beauty. I see many flowers; I can hear the singing of birds and the running of cool waters."

"Your home is an abode of peace. Its beauty is the perfection of understanding. Your jasmine is the fragrance of love."

"Our thoughts, my son, are our real riches. In no place are we far from Allah. What of your work—has it prospered?"

This was, Michael knew, the usual Moslem greeting to a friend; it did not refer to any particular form of work or to his worldly affairs.

"All is well, O my father."

"I have no bodily refreshment to offer you, my son." He smiled a queer, grim smile; it stretched the hard skin of his face, which mid-African suns had tanned.

"I need no material food, O my father," Michael said, "I have eaten well and I know your frugal life. I seek better food."

"That is well, my son. Prayer is better than food. I have prayed for you."

Michael knew that at el-Azhar all studies are absolutely free; the teaching is entirely gratuitous. The poor students even receive their food from the rich endowments of the various riwaks to which they belong. This Michael had learned when he saved the old man's life at Gondokoro. He had discovered the fact that when once he was inside the gate of this gracious institution, he would be sheltered and fed and taught by the love of Islam. Wealthy students pay for privileges and for more luxurious quarters. This visionary and pilgrim asked for nothing more than food enough to keep him alive. What he desired of life was the time and means for studying the teachings of the Koran and the receiving of instruction from learned professors in the refinements of theology and in the sacred traditions. His life had been spent in a treadmill of hard labour. In mid-Africa his duty had been, for as long as he could remember, the guiding of a camel in its unceasing round of a primitive native well, the drawing up and emptying of buckets.

His smile was so mystical and ecstatic while he offered his apologies to Michael for the lack of hospitality, that Michael knew that he was visualizing and enjoying far greater luxury and affluence than had ever been the lot of the richest Mameluke of old days.

They were seated on the floor of the outer cell.

"You have been much in my thoughts, O my son. Allah has desired it. I have seen strange happenings for you. I know that the Light has come nearer."

Michael bowed his head and murmured a few words inaudibly.

"The Lord of the Worlds has revealed himself to you, O my son. My unworthy prayer has been answered." He paused. "Why have you not come? Since the Great Weeping (the inundation of the Nile) you have not left the valley?—you have not come?"

"Yes," Michael said. "I have left the valley. But only work could bring me to Cairo. I was busy."

"I have much to tell you, my son, much that Allah has shown me."

"Please instruct me, O father. I came to you for counsel; in my heart there is unrest."

"I have seen you," he went on, regardless of Michael's almost inaudible remarks, "I have seen you travelling on a long journey. I have seen many trials and many temptations for you. I have also seen you in the great Light. For you there is a treasure laid up, not only in heaven, but on earth, which will help you in the work which the clear voice counsels."

"This is strange," Michael said. "O my father, I am already greatly disturbed; I come to you for help."

"Do not fear, my son. God responds to and supplies the demands of human nature. He has willed that you should devote your life to His teachings."

"You forget, my father. I am not of your faith. I have not embraced
Islam."

"I have my message to deliver. I have seen what I have seen. Every religion which gives a true knowledge of God and directs in the most excellent way of His worship, is Islam."

"You have seen me giving my life to all that I feel to be most urgent in the life of all who know the truth?"

"I have seen you, by Allah's aid and by His bountiful mercy, accomplishing work which will bestow great blessing and peace upon your soul."

"I have thought much of all this," Michael said, "since we last met. The idea has never left me, yet I am puzzled. Why should I feel like this, when better men do not?"

"God, in His almighty word, has declared a higher aim of man's existence, O my son."

"Then why do I not better understand? I feel nothing but dissatisfaction, unfruitfulness."

"A man may not always understand. A hundred different motives may hold him back. But the truth remains, my son, that the grand aim of man's life consists in knowing and worshipping God and living for His sake."

"I wish I could decide! Some people see the road so plainly before them. Mine is broken, and often it is totally lost in the desert sands."

"A man has no choice, my son, in fixing the aim of his life."

"That is your faith, my father."

"Man does not enter the world or leave it as he desires. He is a creature, and the Creator Who has brought him into existence has assigned an object for his existence."

There was silence for a little time, while the old man meditated and recited a sura from the Koran.

"Already, my son, even though you do not know it, you are in the faith. You have seen the perfect Light. Remember that no one can fight with God, or frustrate His designs. Not once, but many times, I have seen you, my son, travelling on this journey. God has sent many prophets to lead mankind into the knowledge of truth. Moses and Christ, they had their divine tasks, but the last and the best of the messengers of God was Mohammed, praised be His holy name. Some day, O my son, He will perfect your religion, and complete His favours by making Islam your faith. Before these messengers there were others, for God has never left the world in desolation. I have seen you surrounded by Light, a light which comes from one of God's messengers, who is never far from you. As I see him, always in the midst of a great light, like the light of the sun, he resembles no mortal I have ever seen on this earth, or any king I have been shown in my dreams. He has greatly suffered for mankind, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, as was the Prophet Christ."

Michael was greatly disturbed. The old man's eyes were far from him. His words had their meaning for Michael more than for himself. The great sunlight was the rays of Aton. The treasure of which he had spoken—was it the treasure of which the vision in the valley had spoken to Margaret?

"Some day I may have more counsel to offer you, my son. To-day I have but strange visions, strange messages. This treasure you are to seek lies in the desert; it is a treasure of great value. I see much gold, but also, my son, much tribulation. This gold . . . it has been lost to the world . . . for many centuries. . . ."

"It is all very strange, my father. Your words are full of meaning. In Egypt there was a King, before the days of Moses, who sacrificed his kingdom to give his people God. His was the religion of the true God and His everlasting mercy."

The old man recited another sura from the Koran. "Go and pray, my son, open your heart to prayer, for prayer is better than strife; prayer is greater than miracles. Perseverance in prayer is Islam."

"Can you tell me nothing more?" Michael said. "Is it not folly to start out on a journey which has no definite ending, no practical purpose?"

"I cannot tell you more, my son, nor can I tell you why these visions have been revealed to me. All I know is that I cannot doubt their source."

"Do you, my father, then absolutely believe in visions?" Michael said.
"I am only a seeker after truth. I am convinced of so little."

"My son, believe in visions. Is their meaning not written on the leaf of a water-melon?" (A thing well-known.)

"We read of them in the Bible."

"Did I not tell you that I knew of your coming? It was revealed to me in a vision. I saw you groping and losing your way. I saw you in thick darkness. I saw you struggling for the Light. Is all that not true? Have you never lost the Light? Has your path been straight and easy? Has the flesh not tempted you?"

Michael bent his head.

"For many weeks a friend has been very close to you. She is in the way of truth. Hold fast to her. There are others who I see in darkness."

"Yes," Michael said. "That is all true. You have seen clearly."

"You will leave those you care for most, my son, and go on a journey into a new country across the river. It is all His purpose; it is all a part of the Guiding Hand, the Ruling Power."

Michael remained lost in thought. That the old African loved him as a son he had no doubt. He knew that his ardent desire was that he should be the means of converting him to the true faith. He knew that the little help which he had once been able to give him had won his undying gratitude. This strange creature, who had only entered upon his university career after his hair had become white and his body worn to a shadow, had earned Michael's respect and veneration. He was conscious of the fact that, devout Moslem as the recluse was, he did not look upon all Christians as heretics and unclean. Long ago Michael and he had exchanged thoughts on their conceptions of God. The pious Moslem had come to the conclusion that but for his lack of a proper understanding of the Koran and of the Prophet's relation to God, Michael was at heart a Mohammedan. He worshipped the one and only God Whom the Prophet had come to reveal. Michael believed in Christ just as he himself believed in Him, as one of God's Messengers, as one of God's Methods of manifesting Himself to mankind.

He had no hesitation in speaking to Michael or in reciting passages from the Holy Book in his presence. Daily he prayed that he might embrace the faith of Islam. It was his love for him and his gratitude which made him eager for this happiness to be bestowed upon his benefactor.

For a long time Michael remained with his old friend, who was glad to learn from him many things which could never have reached his ears from any other source. He lived as a hermit and a recluse inside his little cell, which was lost in the vast dimensions of the Mosque of el-Azhar. As he was lost to the world, so was he surrounded by things of the spirit.

It was late in the afternoon when at last Michael said good-bye and the aged student locked himself into his cell. His adieu was lengthy and beautiful and expressed in the true Moslem fashion. This ardent Englishman was as dear to him as a son. He had no sons of his own, or indeed any friends who loved him. There was scarcely a soul in his old home who remembered his existence. The man who had guided the camel at the well had ceased to cause even his late master a passing thought. The native teacher who had instructed him in the Koran in his boyhood, along with the other village children, and who had first inspired him with the desire to study the Sacred Book at el-Azhar, had long since gone to that world where "black faces shall turn white and white faces shall turn black."

As Michael retraced his steps circumspectly through the class-rooms of the university and across the open court, where the afternoon sun almost blinded him—the darkness of the old man's cell made it seem even fiercer than it had been in the morning—his mind was filled with a thousand thoughts. He was much more restless than he had been on his arrival. Had he done wisely in paying this visit to the visionary? Was he only adding unrest and bewilderment to his soul?

The old man's last words had been to counsel him to follow the dictates of his own conscience, which was God.

"On this journey, which will lead you into the Light, a child of God will guide you, a child of God will point out the way." These had been his last words.

Michael knew that with Moslems the expression "a child of God" is generally applied to religious fanatics, and to simples, people who have not practical sense to enable them to enter into the struggle for existence, people who have, as the Western world terms it, "a screw loose."

"A child of God will lead you. To him has been revealed this ancient treasure, which the desert sands have guarded for unnumbered years."

Michael wondered if he was mad or dreaming. To believe a single word of the mystic's advice seemed rank folly; but here again he was brought face to face with a fact stranger than fiction. This African had spoken of a King who had been God's messenger before the days of Moses and Christ. He was totally without learning, except in the Koran; he was ignorant of the existence or personality of the great heretic Pharaoh: of Egyptian history he knew nothing. Yet what he had said and visualized fitted in with Michael's theory and belief that Akhnaton had buried a great hoard of gold and jewels near his capital of Tel-el-Amarna. Nor was Michael alone in his belief in this theory.

As the gate of the university court was closed behind him, Michael took a last look at the wonderful scene.

Groups of woolly-haired Africans, as black as the basalt tablets in the museum, were seated on the floor of the white marble court. Some were eating their frugal meal; some were lying on their backs resting; while others were lost in prayer. Here and there a tall sheikh or a professor was standing talking to a group of students, seated on the ground at his feet, his flowing robes and majestic turban proclaiming the distinction of his calling. Not one of the professors or teachers received a penny for their services; the most learned men in Egypt offered their services free. The idea and theory of the institution is beautiful and elevating.

Yet Michael knew that to Freddy the whole thing was a waste of time and an antediluvian affair. In the matter of education, the modern Egyptian would have been left hopelessly behind in the progress of the world, but for the Government schools instituted under the British occupation. These men at el-Azhar were learning nothing which could ever serve to put one penny into their pockets.

He could hear Freddy repeating his favourite words of a great modern writer, "I should always distrust the progress of people who walk on their heads. I should always beware of people who sacrifice the interests of their country to those of mankind."

Freddy had thrown the words at Michael's head hundreds of times when he had given expression to his Utopian ideas of oiling the world's creaking hinges, of preventing his predicted world-wide disaster. Michael always considered that the whole of what was termed the civilized world was "walking on its head," that only vanity could blind those who ruled and governed, only arrogance could hide the fact that the seats of the mighty were tottering.

Freddy did honestly distrust people "who walked on their heads," yet Michael thought that he would surely still more distrust the people who did not walk according to their consciences, people who lived the lives marked out for them by others, by the conventions of the world.

This old man, in his dark cell, nursed in the very bowels of Islam, had achieved his heart's desire. He had fulfilled the purpose of his life, a purpose which to Freddy seemed useless and wasteful. That was another question. He had left a life of endless toil under the tropical sun of primitive Africa for what to Freddy would have seemed a mad purpose—to walk to Cairo and spend the last few years of his existence in the silent contemplation of God.

As he thought of the man's former life, Michael could hear his sonorous voice chanting the name of Allah in a hundred beautiful forms, as his bare brown limbs followed in the slow footsteps of a lean white camel round and round a native well.

Truly, perseverance can work miracles. Faith had moved mountains, for God had sent this pauper at the well means whereby he was to achieve his life-long prayer. Michael had been allowed to cross his path. This penniless African had never doubted, he had trusted in Allah. Conflicting doubts and arguments had delayed Michael. He had drifted, one day urged by the unconquerable voice, the next cut off from his purpose by the advice and companionship of prosperous friends. He felt that his faith would move no mountains, his perseverance perform no miracles.

Were Mohammedans more zealous than Christians? Was there in theory, in ideals, any other institution in the world like el-Azhar? These students were not paupers; this was no charitable institution. In this court there were men of all social grades and professions, eager students gathered together for one purpose from every part of the Mohammedan world.

And yet Michael thought that, beautiful as it all was in theory, wonderful as was the indescribable power of Islam, it gave few, if any, of its children the true conception of God. They learned nothing of the tender Father, of the beauty of Aton. In Islam there is no consciousness of God in the song of the thrush to its mate, no sacredness in the bud of a lily. In spite of all the exquisite names by which a Moslem addresses his God, His seat is ever in the high heavens, He still remains to him the Omnipotent God of Israel, the all-powerful Jehovah.

Even his old friend, who could visualize the joys of paradise and smell the perfume of sweet jasmine in his dark cell, did not hear God's voice in the laughing brook, or see His raiment in the blue of the lotus.

Of Akhnaton's closer and more human religion they were ignorant. These students offered obedience and reverence and complete surrender. How few of them knew even the meaning of love! This court was full of ardent students, many of whom had given up well-paid posts to study the word of Allah as revealed by the Prophet, yet scarcely one of them loved the creatures of this world because they were the things of God, because they were God. God sang to Akhnaton when spring was in the year; the birds were His visible form. God smiled to him when the blue lotus covered the waters of his lake in the garden-city of his ideal capital.

To the Moslems God is in the heavens; His immovable seat is there. To the ecstatic visionaries who live, as his old friend lived, so cut off from their natural selves as to be unconscious of their physical body, these are the delights of paradise, seen through the eyes of mystics.

Michael, who passionately loved the world and all of God that is in it, wished that they could see that the joys of paradise are everywhere around us. No visionary's eyes are needed to enjoy their beauty.

The university was now far behind him; he was retracing his steps to modern Cairo, where the calm of Islam would seem like a peaceful dream. The domes of the mosques looked like stationary balloons, made of delicate lace, floating in the blue sky, the tall minarets like lotus buds coming up from a vast lake. A soft mist was etherealizing the bald realities of the native city. Only here and there a vivid patch of colour—the jade-green dome of a saint's tomb, the clear blue or orange of an Arab boy's shirt, the brightly-appliqued portière of a public bath, or the purple robes of a student of the Khedivial School—these, in their Eastern setting, studded the scene with precious gems.

Thrust back again into the vortex of noise and striving, Michael felt as "lonely as a wandering cloud." His interview with his old friend had not soothed him; it had neither helped him to determine him in his views, or to deter him from them. His thoughts seemed a part of the surging street. Michael Ireton's counsel was still the only thing which he could grasp. He would go and find himself in the desert.

But mingled with this idea came the two other influences—the old man's vision, in which he had seen him journeying into the desert in search of some hidden treasure—and now many visionaries in Egypt had not found treasure, but had lost their lives and their minds on journeys after imaginary gold?—and Margaret's influence, Margaret, who had been given a message for him—of that he felt convinced. She, at least, could be trusted, with her sane, practical Lampton brain. She had made up no fable. Her vision had not been the result of her imagination. And then again came Freddy's voice:

"I should always distrust the progress of people who walk on their heads." The words kept recurring over and over again.

Did he, Michael, spend his life "walking on his head"? He wished that he knew.

He was passing the wide terrace of Shepheard's Hotel, where tourists enjoy afternoon-tea. The scene was cosmopolitan and gay. Michael was walking on the side-path, under the level of the terrace.

Suddenly he felt something drop lightly on his hat. He looked up, and as he did so a stephanotis flower fell into the street and his eyes were met by two of clear azure blue.

"What a brown study!" a taunting voice said. "Come and have a cup of tea."

"No, thanks," Michael said. "I'm not dressed for this sort of thing."
He indicated the gaily-dressed crowd.

"I insist," Millicent Mervill said, and as she spoke, she stretched out her hand and nipped out the book Michael had in his coat-pocket. "Now you'll have to come and get it, and I'll order tea. Fresh tea, for two, please, Mohammed," she said to the waiter who was standing near her table.

Michael turned reluctantly and walked up the flight of steps which took him on to the hotel-terrace.

"How nice!" Mrs. Mervill said happily. "Now tell me where you have been. I heard you were in Cairo. Were you going back without seeing me?"

"How did you know I was in Cairo?"

"Ah, that's telling! First of all you tell me what you have been doing. You look tired." Her voice was tender. "You are not happy? And I have been very good!"

"I am tired," Michael said. "Cairo tires me after the desert. I have been to el-Azhar."

"To the university! I want to go there. If we had only gone together!
Why didn't you take me?"

A strange smile changed Michael's expression. If Millicent Mervill had been there! He thought of her in that courtyard, in her luxurious modern clothes. How absurd her becoming hat would have seemed, how grotesque her daintily slippered feet! How little she divined his thoughts.

"What took you there to-day? Tell me."

"I have an old friend there, a student."

"A native, do you mean?"

"Yes, a native from the country south of Gondokoro."

"Gondokoro? How did you come to know him?"

Millicent Mervill's curiosity was unlimited. Her persistence resembled the perseverance which is Islam.

"It's a long story," Michael said. "I always go to see him when I come to Cairo. He's a mystic and a religious recluse. I like him. We are great friends."

Mohammed had returned with the tea, and Michael, who was more than ready for it, lapsed into silence while he ate his Huntley and Palmer biscuits and drank his tea. His thoughts went back to el-Azhar.

His silence lasted for some time. He was very far from Shepheard's
Hotel. Margaret had not forgotten her promise. She was closer than
Millicent.

"You are not very polite—I have had to pump you with questions, or you would not have spoken at all. I have been patient while you drank your tea; now talk to me."

"Please forgive me, but you know I did not want to come. I was hungry and I was going back to tea. I am not good company."

"You didn't want to come?" She laughed. "Really, your rudeness is refreshing! The desert has made you worse than ever."

Michael looked into her beautiful eyes. "I am in no temper for banter. You know what I mean, you know why I didn't want to have tea with you or see you. Rudeness between us is out of the question."

"All this because you're a dear old puritan. Or is it because"—she hardened her eyes—"because you're afraid of the dark-haired girl? Has she forgiven you?" In the same breath she said, "When are we going on our journey? It's my turn soon."

"What do you mean?" he said. "I wish you wouldn't talk like that. We are going on no journey."

"You'll let me give you another cup of tea?—I'm allowed to do that much. Well, I had my fortune told two days ago by a man at the Pyramids. He's supposed to be very clever. He said I was going on a journey into the desert with a man I loved; he spoke of some great thing that was going to happen on the journey. He described you accurately. He was really very funny—I wish you could have heard him. He saw great wealth for you and some misfortunes."

Michael looked into her mischievous eyes. "They talk a lot of rot."

"Then you don't believe in that sort of thing? He saw sickness and gold and love. We were in the desert. He saw gold."

"Hush," Michael said. "You must forget all that."

"It was odd, wasn't it? You know how I have urged you to go with me.
I never saw the man before, he has never seen you."

Again Michael said "Hush." Again Millicent paid no attention to him, beyond saying that it was funny that he would never allow her to talk of her love for him, when he had often told her all about his religion of love.

Again Michael said, "I refuse absolutely to be drawn into a discussion upon the subject. You are frivolous. You and I know quite well that yours is not love."

"Perhaps not your kind of love, with a big L. But call a rose by whatsoever name you will, it smells as sweet. I can't quote, but you know what I mean, and that true love without passion and passion without love are both worthless. Every fanatic has passion in his or her love. That is why they enjoy it—the scourging of the flesh, the self-denial—the body enjoys this form of self-torture for the object of its adoration. There," she said, "I will behave like the dear little innocent you first thought I was if you will come and see the Pyramids at sunset." The swift transition of her thoughts was typical of her personality.

Michael's train did not leave the station for Luxor until nine-thirty.
He had nothing to do.

"If you'll come," she said, "I'll not do or say one thing to hurt you.
I'll be my very nicest—and I can be nice and good now, can't I?"

"Then come," he said. "I've not been there since the 'Great Weeping.'"
He used the old man's picturesque term for the inundation of the Nile.

Millicent Mervill was no fool. She meant to keep to her word, and did. The evening's excursion proved a great success and restored Michael to a more normal state of mind.

CHAPTER XI

When Michael got back to the camp there was so much genuine pleasure in being one of the trio again that he felt that it had been well worth the trouble of the journey, to be received back again so warmly and to see unclouded happiness in Margaret's smile. Her character was transparently sincere.

How radiant she looked, as Freddy and she hurried to meet him! A glad picture for tired eyes.

"Things are 'piping'!" she said eagerly, when he inquired about the "dig." "Freddy has only been waiting for you to come back before he clears out the last few days' debris from the shaft. He has been tidying up the site—it looks much more important."

Tired as Michael was after his hot journey, instinctively they turned their steps to the excavation. Things had certainly advanced greatly during Michael's absence. The deep shaft was almost cleared of rubbish; the site was tidied up and in spick-and-span order.

Michael was very soon drawn into the feeling of excitement and anticipation. Freddy, he thought, looked tired and anxious, which was, of course, only natural, for Michael knew that on his shoulders rested the entire responsibility of the "dig" and that anything might happen during the time they were waiting for the photographer and the Chief Inspector.

Michael's imagination was ever too vivid. He could see a hundred plundering hands stretched out in the darkness to seize the buried treasure. He could visualize the poisoning of the watch-dogs and the silent killing of the guards, and Freddy waking up to find that his "pet tomb" had been burgled and robbed of its ancient treasures.

A good deal of discussion ensued between Michael and Freddy which was above Margaret's head. The approximate date of the tomb and a hundred different suggestions and problems which were still beyond her knowledge were gone into by the two Egyptologists. The soothsayer's predictions were not improbable; there were evidences which suggested that the tomb was one of great importance.

"Let's get back to dinner," Freddy said. "I scarcely had any lunch—I couldn't leave the men. I'm ready for some food."

Instantly they retraced their steps. Margaret was humming softly the air of some popular song. Both she and Michael were always anxious to administer to Freddy's wishes.

"It's topping to be back," Michael said. "The smells in Cairo were pretty bad. This is glorious!"

They had almost reached the hut.

"We have only mummy smells here," Margaret said. "But they get pretty thick, as the store-room fills up with finds." She looked round. "Freddy, if I'd a little water, I could make the desert blossom like the rose." She sighed happily. "As it is, it's 'paradise enow'—I don't think I want it other than it is."

While they were at dinner, which, compared to their usual simple fare, was of the fatted-calf order and one of Margaret's devising, Michael told them of all that he had done in Luxor and Cairo, not keeping back even his excursion to the Pyramids or his visit to el-Azhar. Freddy was greatly entertained by both episodes, the one as a strong antidote to the other.

Michael had, of course, given but few details of either experience.
The mystic's counsel was not, he felt, suited for discussion and
certainly he had no wish to annoy Margaret by unnecessary remarks about
Millicent Mervill.

There was something in Mike's manner which assured Freddy that the influence of the mystic had triumphed, that the beautiful Millicent had not exercised her usual powers over his friend.

During the recital of his doings, Margaret met Mike's eyes frankly. Hers were without questions or doubts. She felt as Freddy did—that the woman whom she so much disliked had not again come between them. After all, the promise which she had given Michael, and which she had kept, might have availed.

As Michael had never spoken one word of love to Margaret, she had, of course, no right to expect him to behave towards her as if they were engaged; and yet there was that between them which meant far more than a mere formal proposal and acceptance of marriage. Some influence had brought them together in a manner which seemed outside themselves. They had been the closest friends from the very first. Her vision had united their interests.

Of marriage as the definite result of their close, yet indefinite intimacy, Margaret still never thought. Mike and marriage seemed qualities which separated like oil and water. All she asked of fate at present was the continuance of their unique friendship and the life which she found so absorbingly interesting. A year ago she had longed to come to Egypt, but a year ago she had never dreamed that she would become so thrilled with the excavating of a tomb which had been made for a man who probably lived before Moses. The human side of Egyptology was being revealed to her. She did not feel now as if her brother was only going to discover a fresh mummy to put away in a museum somewhere; he was going to break into the secret dwelling-house of a man who had taken his treasures with him to live for ever in the bowels of the smiling hills. There are few tombs in Egypt as the Western world thinks of tombs; there are eternal mansions, gorgeously decorated and superbly built and equipped. The abiding cities of the Egyptians were the cities of the dead.

Margaret was living on the horizon of life. Every breath of desert air was like delicious food; every dawn and sunset stored her heart with dreams; each fresh intimacy with Michael placed a new jewel in the casket of her soul; every hour with Freddy was a privilege and a reward. In her veins the dance of youth tripped a lightsome measure. Happiness made every moment vital.

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."

The humour of his words drove the tears from her eyes. Still she did not speak, but he saw the inference of her smile.

"I mean," he said, "that this other me has loved you all the time, the me that couldn't help speaking, the me that recognized the fact ever since I saw you at the ferry. How I loved the first glimpse of you, Meg!"

He drew her more closely to him. "May I love you, dearest?" He bent his head; their lips were almost touching; he held her closely. "First tell me that our friendship is love."

His breath warmed her cheeks; she could feel the tension of his body. Lost in his strength, Meg was speechless. The greatness of her love seemed a part of the wide Sahara. The stillness and his arms were lovelier than all the dreams she had ever dreamed.

His voice was a low whisper. "Meg, do you love me?" His lips had not taken their due.

Meg's fingers encircled her throat. "Love is choking me. . . . I can't speak."

Instantly Michael's head bent lower. He kissed her lips, and then, for the first time, Margaret knew what it was to be dominated by her senses. Thought fled from her; her lover's lips and his strength, for he seemed to be holding her up in a great world of impressions in which she could feel no foundation, were the two things left to her.

Michael realized that now and for ever there could be no going back. Their old state of friendship was shattered. His kiss had carried them at a rate which has no definition.

Margaret returned his love with a devout and beautiful passion. Eve had not been more certain that Adam was intended for her by God.

"Meg," he said, "how do you feel? I feel just a little afraid, I had no idea that love was like this. Had you? You have suddenly become as personal and necessary to me as my own arms or legs. You were you before—now you are a bit of me."

They were standing apart, facing each other, arms outstretched, hands in hands. Now and then the bewilderment of things made it very compelling, this desire to look and look into each other's eyes, to try to discover new characteristics born of their amazing confession.

"It's a tremendous thing," Meg said thoughtfully, "a tremendous and wonderful thing."

"If we have only lived for this one hour, it's worth it," Mike said.
"To you and me it's certainly a tremendous thing."

Some lover's questions followed, questions which Margaret had to answer, the sort of questions every woman knows whom love has not passed over, questions which Margaret, with all her fine Lampton brains and common sense, did not think foolish, questions which she answered more easily and accurately than any ever set to her in college or university examinations. She answered them, too, with a fine understanding of human nature. Lampton brains were not to be despised, even in the matter of "How, when and where did you first love me?"

She knew quite well what Michael meant when he said that he was a little afraid. She, too, felt a little afraid, just because things could never be the same again. Love in Egypt seemed to become Egyptian in its immensity and power. It was a part of the desert and in the brightness of each glittering star. She doubted if she could have felt this tremendousness of love in England. Had something in the power of Egypt, in the passing of its civilization and religions, affected her senses? She could not imagine feeling, as she now felt, in Suffolk. Here, in this valley of sleeping Pharaohs, in this eternal city of a lost civilization, she had been transformed into another creature.

These thoughts jumbled themselves together in her mind, as they dawdled back to the camp, the happy dawdling of lovers.

Suddenly Michael caught her in his arms and said, "Meg, how on earth am
I going to make you understand how much I love you?"

Meg read an unhappy meaning in the words. "I shall understand," she said. "I think something outside myself will help me to understand."

He turned her face up to the stars. It was bathed in light.

"You beautiful Meg, the stars adore you!"

Meg struggled and laughed. "I'm so glad my face is all right, that you like it, Mike."

Mike laughed. "I shouldn't mind if you weren't beautiful, you know I shouldn't, for you'd still be you."

Meg's practical common sense was not to be drugged by love's ether.
"Dear," she said happily, "don't talk rubbish! As if you, with your
artistic sense and love of beauty, would have fallen in love with me if
I had turned-in-feet and a face half forehead, just because I was me!"

They both laughed happily. Then Michael said, sadly and abruptly—his voice had lost its confidence—"Why have I let myself say all this, Meg? What thrust my feelings into expression, feelings I scarcely was conscious of possessing until I saw you lit up by the shining stars? I never, never planned such a thing."

"I know," Meg said. "We neither of us dreamed of it when we left the hut, did we?"

"I had a thousand other things to consult you about, to tell you," he said. "I have a thousand other things to do. I have a mission to fulfil before I speak of love. It just came, it suddenly bubbled up and poured over like water in a too-full bottle."

"Do you regret it?" Margaret said simply and sympathetically. She was not hurt; she knew what he meant; she knew that he had more than once spoken of the single-heartedness of a man's work, the work which Mike hoped to do, when he had no family ties, no woman's love to bind him, to nourish and satisfy.

"Dearest—I don't regret it," he said. "It was inevitable. Something else would have called it forth if the stars hadn't. All the same, it is of you I am thinking . . . I had no right to . . ."

"To what, Mike?"

"I'm a drifter, Meg, and I'm not ready to be anything else—I can't be."