"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 pa.s.sion. Eve had not been more certain that Adam was intended for her by G.o.d.

"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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing 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."

"I don't want you to be anything else." Meg's voice and laugh were Love. Her sincere eyes were happily confident.

"People who 'walk on their heads' don't make fortunes, beloved."

"People who think the desert is 'paradise enow' don't need fortunes."

Michael pressed the palms of her hands to his lips. "Dear strong hands," he said, "are they willing to work with mine?"

"Oh, Mike," she said. "I'm so glad, so happy! It doesn't seem fair--our world's all heaven to-night--I want others to have just a little of it."

They listened to the silence.

Michael's thoughts were of his world-state, his religion of Love, the closeness of G.o.d.

"Every star in the sky seems to know about our love," Meg said. "And I think the waiting silence has been expecting this."

"I know," Michael said. "To me love seems to be crowding the valley and flying down from the hills and searching the stillness. Life's become a new kind of thing altogether, Meg, we'll have to help each other."

"That's just what I feel. It's alarming to find yourself quite a different human being in less than an hour, to have suddenly developed unsuspected elements in your nature." She laughed. "I never thought I could be such a complete fool, dearest."

Michael kissed her rapturously. "Let's be big, big fools, beloved, let's enjoy this thing that's come to us." He paused. Again he looked troubled and serious.

"Why trouble?" Meg said. "I know just what's in your heart. You love me and I love you, and I trust you. You weren't ready for any engagement--you never thought of marriage. Well, let all that come in good time if it is meant to be. Let us be content with love for the present. It's surely big enough." She sighed. "It's tired me, Mike, it's so enormous."

"But, dearest, I meant to talk to you about very different things.

Love just caught me. . . . I was taken unawares . . . some look of yours did it, or some trick of the stars. . . I can't tell which.

Anyhow, it's done."

"Tell me," she said. "All that you had meant to talk about. It's not too late. We must be friends as well as lovers now."

"It was about my visit to el-Azhar in Cairo."

"Yes?" Meg said. Her breath came more quickly.