"No--I meant, is he still in the valley, or are you two alone here?

How deliciously romantic!" Millicent sighed. The sigh was more suggestive than her words.

"My brother is in the tomb at this moment," Meg said. "You seem to have very extraordinary ideas of the ways of excavators"--she had flushed to the roots of her hair--"of the behaviour of ordinary English people."

"What was the desert made for, but freedom, my dear? If one can't live in this valley as one wants to, where can one, I should like to know?"

"We are living as we like," Meg said. "Your ideas of freedom may not be mine. Our interests lie apart--our ideas of enjoyment are, as far as I can understand, poles apart."

"A foolish waste of time, my dear, that's all I can say. May I smoke?"

Michael handed her a box of cigarettes; he noticed the exquisite refinement of her hands as she picked out a cigarette, her brightly-polished nails. "Thanks, dear," she said, as she lit the cigarette from the match which he held out to her--the "dear" was for Meg's benefit; for as their eyes met hers were full of genuine fun and mischief.

"I must tease her," she said, in a low whisper; Meg had gone to the end of the room. "I love shocking those dark eyes--I enjoy making her hate me. It's only fun."

Meg's heart was beating. How dared she call Michael "dear"? How dared she intrude herself uninvited upon their simple life? Her beauty, her foolish feminine clothes, angered her. She hated Millicent's fine skin, which was, even in the desert heat, as poreless as a baby's. It was a wonderful skin for a grown person, let alone for a woman of Millicent Mervill's age. Meg thought of the dried mummy's lips. One day that pure soft flesh, which held the tints of a field daisy, would be more revolting to look at if it were unearthed than the skin of the three-thousand-year-old queen. If Meg had possessed a wishing-ring, it would not have taken long to effect the inevitable change.

The impudence of the woman maddened her. She knew that she could not, even if she had wished to, behave as she did. Millicent did exactly as she liked, as the impulse of the minute suggested.

Meg wondered how she had pa.s.sed the time while they were at the tomb.

Had she examined any private object in the hut? Had she interviewed the servants? She was quite capable of doing it.

She heard her whisper to Mike. Her own sensitiveness now drove her out of the hut; if they wished to speak in whispers, let them speak. She stood sullenly outside the door.

Why did not some strong man strangle women like Millicent Mervill? Why had not she herself the courage to tell her what she thought of her?

Probably Millicent would only smile and show her perfect teeth--they always made Meg furious, because they were even better than her own, and hers were, so she thought, her strongest a.s.set--and say, "Poor girl! You are a little overtired"; or she would say, "You have so much to make you happy, dear, and I have so little. Don't be unkind--I only long for sympathy."

Millicent's moments of self-pity were mean and contemptible and yet they were effective.

The only thing to do was to leave the two alone, to trust Michael and go about her business.

Presently she heard Michael say: "Well, I'll leave you to rest until lunch-time--I can't idle while Freddy is working like a n.i.g.g.e.r. You'll be all right, I know, with your book and a cigarette."

Margaret slipped round to the back of the hut; she did not want to speak to Michael; she was thankful that he had left Mrs. Mervill, but his voice had been too kind, too nice. Meg did not know what she would have liked him to do, what he could have done otherwise. She only knew that the niceness of his voice annoyed her.

When the overseer's whistle for the workmen to "down picks and spades"

sounded and the time was ripe for Freddy to appear, Margaret sauntered off to meet him. When she saw him coming she hurried towards him. How she loved him!

When they met she said, "That cat Mrs. Mervill is here. Oh, Freddy, I hate her!"

Freddy laughed. Millicent Mervill, with her extreme modernity and virile pa.s.sions, was so far removed from the thought of the tomb, from the brown mummy, whose golden ribbons he had been examining; his sister's annoyance was so utterly unlike her mood of the earlier morning! He had never seen Meg so moved as she had been in the tomb.

He felt a little relieved that a very human and irritating influence had suddenly thrust itself across her path. Meg was getting too enthralled in Egypt. These thoughts flashed through his mind.

"Good old Meg," he said tenderly. "The fighting Lampton's roused, is it?"

"Yes," Meg said. "I am roused. She's so insolent, Freddy."

"What?" he said, stopping her before she got further. "Insolent? to whom?"

"To . . ." Meg hesitated. "To life," she said abruptly. "She says things that I could hit her for saying. Freddy, do squash her!--she suggests something nasty with every word she utters."

"I'll try and flirt with her--won't that do?"

"No, don't, Freddy!" Fear clutched at Meg's heart; the woman in her trembled for her brother. Millicent was so fair, so tempting; Freddy was young and, Meg thought, ignorant of the wiles of women.

"You'd rather I did than Mike?" Freddy's eyes laughed as he watched the blush rise to his sister's cheeks. It made her extraordinarily attractive--indeed, fighting seemed to suit Meg. He pinched her arm; they were close pals, tried chums. "I know your secret, Meg--I've had eyes for other things than the tomb!"

"Do you mind, Freddy?" Meg slipped her arm through her brother's; her eyes shone with happiness.

Freddy pressed her arm close to his side. Meg loved him for it. "If I'd minded I shouldn't have let things go so far, should I? I could have packed you off home."

"You've been a darling, Freddy, and I'm so happy! I never knew anything could be so perfect. I sound silly, don't I?"

"No. Mike's one of the very best, Meg. But you'll have to look after him a bit." Freddy's voice was graver.

"How do you mean, Freddy?" Meg at once thought of Mrs. Mervill.

Freddy read her thoughts in her voice.

"I don't mean in that way--rather not! He's as straight as a die. I mean, you'll have to help him to walk on his two legs, Meg--stop him standing on his head, make him practical."

"I love him for it, Freddy."

"But it doesn't pay. We're of this world and we've got to live in this world. Mike's always trying to get beyond it, to get into touch with the other side. It's no good meddling with that sort of thing, it always has a disastrous effect on the human mind and human happiness, which proves to me that we're not intended to know or to get in touch with those who have left us. It's unwise to give up one's thoughts to the supernatural."

"Perhaps it is," Meg said, "but why should we be contented to stand still about all that sort of thing, while we leap ahead in science and material progress and everything else? Mike thinks the true understanding is coming, the darkness we have lived in is pa.s.sing away."

"He may be right," Freddy said. "But for your happiness, Meg, I wish he'd chuck it. The 'sublime truth of spiritualism' he talks about, and the 'G.o.d-ruled world-state'--the one's dangerous to his bodily welfare, the other's the Utopian dream of failures. I don't want you to marry a failure, old girl. I want you to have the sort of life you're fitted for."

"People must be what they are, Freddy, and failure isn't a failure if it's done its bit. Rome wasn't built in a day, or the union of Italy achieved without broken hearts--modern Italy had its failures, its Utopian dreamers, long before Garibaldi's triumphant thousand marched into Rome."

"That's true, only one never wants a failure to be a member of one's own family. I don't want a dreamer for a brother-in-law, Meg--not for your husband."

"The Lamptons always want to come in with the victorious legions," Meg said. They were nearing the hut. "It seems as if the real victors in life were what we call the failures, the pioneers of truth."

"I'm awfully glad, anyway, Meg. Mike's a lucky chap and you're a lucky girl. You know, I think the world of Mike!"

"We aren't engaged, Freddy."

"Oh, aren't you?" He looked at her with laughing eyes. "What do you call it, then? An understanding? Or are you just 'walking out' like 'Arry and 'Arriet?"

Meg laughed happily. "We love each other--we've not got beyond that yet. I suppose we're just 'walking out.'"

"You've told each other about the loving?" Freddy's kindness was bringing something like tears to Margaret's eyes.

"Yes. Michael didn't mean to--it . . ." she paused.

"Oh, I know! The usual thing. Things seem to be going on all right."

He laughed. "It mustn't run too smoothly."

"Don't laugh, Freddy. Michael thought you would think it cheek--he won't allow me to consider myself bound to him." She laughed deliriously. "The dear boy wants me to feel free to change my mind, because he's 'a drifter,' because he thinks he isn't a good enough match for your sister. Your sister, Freddy, comes right above mere Meg."