"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 sc.r.a.p 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.suan."

"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 a.s.suan 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 subst.i.tute 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; G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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."