"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 fete 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 s.p.a.ce 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sion 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 coa.r.s.e 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 dispa.s.sionately."

"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."