"What about my food and medicine for your sick man, your valuable guide to the hidden treasure? You can't afford to let him slip through your hands!"

Michael's eyes dropped. He had allowed Millicent to remain unquestioned, even willingly, as a member of his expedition, since the sick man was in need of the delicate food and medicine her equipment contained.

As his eyes dropped, he asked her what she knew about the hidden treasure. He had only told her about the tomb of Akhnaton; he had particularly refrained from mentioning the Pharaoh's hidden store.

"How did I get to know all I wanted to know?" She glanced at him tauntingly. "It wasn't quite all my love for you, dear man! Perhaps I, too, wished to pick up some of the jewels in King Solomon's Mines!"

"I never mentioned them to you--what do you know about them?"

"What about the precious jewel in the saint's ear--the oriental amethyst, the ninth jewel in the high priest's breast-plate, as mentioned in Exodus, 'and the third row a ligure, an agate, and an amethyst'?" Millicent trilled off the text laughingly.

"You have stooped to spying," he said. "You have an eavesdropper in your camp?"

"'Verily those who do deeds of real goodness shall drink of a cup tempered with camphor'! Well, is it tempered enough, Michael?" She laughed mockingly, derisively. "Was the deed pure goodness? Was this fanatic not the 'favoured of G.o.d' who was to lead you to Akhnaton's treasure?"

"Go!" he cried. "I have heard enough!"

"And take all my provisions and medicines with me!"

"We must do the best we can for him without your luxuries, if you have no mercy, no heart for the suffering."

"And how are you going to get rid of me?"

"You are going. I don't know how, but you're going."

"What if I refuse to go?"

"You won't."

Millicent laughed.

"You won't," he repeated. "You must go. You can't stay."

"And why?"

"Because. . . ." Michael hesitated. "Because . . . you know . . . you know why . . . you know, what you have just said."

"Because you are afraid you will end by being my lover?"

"No. Because I wish to be free of spies and hindrances."

"Then I do hinder? You know my spying has not hurt you!" Her eyes glowed.

Michael gazed sternly into them. He never lied. With him the truth was instinctive, masterful; it was the keynote of his religion. "Yes,"

he said. "You are a spiritual hindrance. I am a human man--you are a sensual woman. You have determined to do everything in your power to keep me ever mindful of the fact. Because I love Margaret Lampton and I do not love you, you have determined to make me unworthy of her, you have trapped me and tricked me and followed me into the wilderness."

"You must admit I managed that part of the job very neatly."

Millicent's words were brave, but a little fear had crept into her heart. Michael was in no mood for trifling. Her game was lost.

"How did you do it?" he said. His hands tightened; they held her shoulders. The gentle aesthete was a furious Celt. He wished that it was a man with whom he was dealing.

Still Millicent was brave, her voice scornful. "_Baksheesh_--the moving finger in the East."

"You contemptible creature!" he said. "Who did you pay?"

"That would be telling."

"I know it would," he said. "And you are going to tell me." He held her with painful firmness.

Millicent's courage gave way. Michael's eyes alarmed her. Something in them warned her that, once roused, he was a dangerous man to trifle with. There is not an immeasurable distance between the mystic and the madman. The pressure of his fingers on her shoulders warned her of his strength; his thumb was like a turnscrew.

"Who did you pay?" he asked. "Tell me, or you will regret it." His grasp became an agony.

"Mohammed Ali," Millicent murmured. "He showed me Margaret's diary."

Michael groaned. "You little beast!" he cried. "You mean little beast!"

Millicent burst into a flood of weeping. She knew that it was her only chance, a woman's deadliest weapon with such a man. "I loved you so!

Oh, Mike, I loved you so! Can't you understand? Is there no humanity in you? Is your nature so devoid of pa.s.sion, of human love, that you can't understand the mad heights and the depths it can lead you to? I have never been given the chance of rising to the heights."

Mike heard her sobs. He saw her beautiful body convulsed with anguish.

The real woman was there at his feet, a weak creature, whose love for himself had driven her to do these deeds he despised. He felt that he was in a manner to blame; for him she had sunk to this degradation.

"I am so ashamed, Mike, but for days my shame has been drowned in anger. I followed you and trapped you and spied upon you." She looked up pleadingly. "And I'd do it all over again, even worse, Mike, I know I would, even though I am despicable in my own eyes."

"Don't!" he said. "It has become a madness with you, an obsession."

"Love is a madness," she said. "It is an obsession. It is devouring me. No one can judge of its power until they have felt it."

He sat down beside her. "Millicent," he said gently, "have you ever thought of praying, of asking for help?" He paused. "You poor, poor soul, have you ever in your life tried to reach your higher self, to get away from all this?"

"No, never." The words came frankly. "First let me enjoy this human love, Michael." Her eyes pleaded. "Then I may try to be as you are, but not till then."

"It would be no enjoyment," he said. "Only a hideous mockery, a wilful lowering of your better self."

"Not of my better self, Mike--not really. I might rise to higher things afterwards, with that one beautiful memory to help me, an Eden in the desert." Her voice was humble; her eyes swam with tears--a beautiful Magdalen.

"Poor little soul!" he said. "Poor little Millicent!"

"Yes, Mike, poor little soul, poor lonely soul!"

"I wish I could do something to help you, show you that there is a higher, stronger support than any poor love of mine."

"But I don't want it--at least, not now. It doesn't appeal to me. I don't want it, for if I tried to be better, I'd have to try to kill my desire for you, and even if it gives me no happiness, I'd rather have it than kill it. I couldn't relinquish it. It would be giving up the only thing I have of you--my poor, unwanted wanting of you."

"What can I say? What can I do?" Michael was in despair. "How can I help you?"

This humble, tearful Millicent made him wretched. He felt guilty and unkind. He was the innocent cause of her unhappiness. It was not possible to be human and remain untouched by her pa.s.sion for himself.

Yet he knew that he must not allow her to know that, or how his heart ached for her. Her spiritual loneliness horrified him. She had absolutely nothing to turn to, nothing to rely upon. Her religious observances were mere conventional occupations. And yet mixed up in the woman there was a mental quality very rare and sympathetic, a strange fitful brilliance, extremely pleasing. Once or twice on their journey she had expressed the peculiar quality of the scenery in words which were not far off prose poems. It had puzzled him to know how her intellectual refinement could dwell in the same temple as her low characteristics.