"But what scandal?"

"The reports that are going about that Mrs. Mervill is with him in the desert, that that is why I haven't heard from Mike. Everyone is saying it." Meg's words conveyed an apology for her brother.

"Your brother really believes this, and yet he knows Mr. Amory?"

"Yes. But you mustn't blame him. He has tried not to believe it; he is really awfully good about it all. And I must admit that it looks as if the story was true, but I just know it isn't."

"Of course it isn't!" Hada.s.sah said, almost sharply. "Who spread the report?"

"First it came from the native diggers in the valley, and then my brother heard it from Mr. King. Now lots of people are talking about it, and my brother wants me to go home. . . . I've promised to go if . . ." Margaret paused. "That's why I came to you. I want your advice. If we could only hear from Michael, I know the whole thing would be explained. My brother would do anything he could to help me, but his business ties him and . . ." again she paused and then said hurriedly, "You know what men are--he hates my name being bandied about."

"I'll get my husband to comb out the truth from all these lies."

Hada.s.sah put her hand on Margaret's. "You'll laugh at your fears one day."

"If you only knew how thoughtless Michael is about the opinion of the world! If he isn't doing wrong, he never stops to think what construction the world may be putting on his action, nor does he care."

"Personally I think it's the malicious talk of some enemy, or of Mrs.

Mervill herself. Can she have intercepted his letters, and spread the report so as to separate you?"

"She may have followed him. If she is with him, she is self-invited."

Hada.s.sah Ireton interrupted her. "Even Mrs. Mervill could scarcely do that!"

"My brother says that I may wait in Cairo until we can find definite proofs one way or another. A letter may come from Michael at any moment. I know it will come if he is all right, but I'm so afraid he is ill--that is really what I came to ask you about."

"You want us to try to find out if he is ill?"

"Yes, if you will, if it is not asking too much. Something keeps on telling me that he is ill, that he is in need of help." Margaret was speaking more earnestly and with less restraint. "I have had queer visions and many presentiments since I lived in the Valley. I seem to be able to see beyond . . . if you know what I mean. They have come true in many instances--it is not mere imagination. But perhaps you have as little belief as I once had in these things?"

"Where ought Mr. Amory to be just now--have you any idea?" Hada.s.sah's voice conveyed the idea to Margaret that the subject was too serious to be spoken of hastily or decisively.

"He ought to have reached his destination, the hills beyond the ruins of Tel-el-Amarna. Did you know the object of his journey?" Margaret spoke nervously, shyly; she shrank from speaking of her lover's belief in the treasure of Akhnaton.

"Yes. He told my husband the twofold reason of his wish to make the journey. He believes in the theory that there is a buried treasure in the hills beyond Tel-el-Amarna, where Akhnaton was buried, and I think he also wanted . . . what shall I say? . . . to find himself--I suppose I must use that hackneyed phrase for want of a better--to find himself in the desert. Wasn't that it?"

"Yes. He is a born wanderer." Margaret said the words dreamily; her thoughts had flown, to the luminous figure of Akhnaton. In this superb mansion, fashioned by Oriental genius and Eastern wealth and imagination, her vision took its place, not unnaturally, in the strange list of things which her eyes had seen or her mind had received during her life in Egypt.

"Will you enjoy a wandering life? Don't you think women like a home?"

"With an intellectual companion any place is home; with a stupid one a palace becomes a wilderness. I have learnt that in the desert, if I have learnt nothing else, I think. Michael could make a real home out of a bathing-machine and a box of books." She laughed. "He is never dull, he doesn't know the meaning of the word bored. His only trouble is that no day is long enough. He'd forget the dimensions of the bathing-machine--it would become to him a beautiful house like this."

"What a wonderful thing love is!" Hada.s.sah said to herself, as she watched Margaret's eyes glow and shine. Her thoughts had transformed her. "A wonderful and beautiful thing! Whatever would the world be without it? And yet there are some people who go through life without the faintest idea of what it really means!"

"What we three have got to do," she said aloud, "is to discover where the wanderer is. The sooner he is found the sooner he can start life in a bathing-box. I agree with you so far that I think it's more than likely that he is ill--not necessarily seriously ill, but ill enough to have been delayed on his journey. Still, that is not the only solution of the problem. His letters may be lying in some native post-office.

I've known letters remain for weeks on end in out-of-the-way village post-offices. The official can't read the address; he puts the letter aside until someone comes along who can. It may be sooner, it may be later; they eventually reach their destination."

Margaret smiled. "Michael's writing is not too clear--that may be the cause of the delay."

"My husband has received letters which have been months on a journey which should have taken days. Time means nothing to desert peoples, as you know."

"You have made me feel much happier," Margaret said brightly. She could have kissed the beautiful woman by her side out of sheer grat.i.tude.

For some time longer they discussed the subject more fully and laid their plans.

Suddenly Hada.s.sah said, "Where are you staying in Cairo?"

When Margaret told her the name of her hotel, she said, "You must come to us. We have lots of spare room in this big house, and if you are here we can work together so much better. The hotel is too public. It would really give us great pleasure if you will. I feel sure it would be wiser."

"How kind of you to ask me!" Margaret said. "I am quite a stranger to you! I'd love to come. Michael has told me something about your work among the Copts--indeed, everyone speaks of it, of your new educational scheme and the progress you have made in so short a time. I should like to understand more about it, if I may."

"Perhaps our minds have met many times before, for I think we are scarcely strangers," Hada.s.sah said. "I hope you don't feel towards me as one?"

Margaret looked pleased. "I have heard so much about you, about your work."

"It is very uphill work. You can only hope for very slow results amongst a people who have been scorned and persecuted and rejected for generations and generations. I, as a Syrian, know what social persecution means, so it is my highest ambition to do what little I can, with my husband's help and my father's wealth, to elevate the ideals and the moral standard of the young Coptic girls. You can do nothing, or next to nothing, with the older women. Their characters are formed, their prejudices too deeply-rooted."

"I suppose so. It is the same in India--the women there are the bitterest opponents to the reforms for women. They cling to the suffering and oppression they endure."

"These Copts have absorbed so many of the worst features of the Mohammedan civilization--their superst.i.tions, their domestic customs as regards the women, and a great many of their least desirable religious ceremonies. It is hard, for instance, for a stranger to distinguish between a Christian native's marriage or funeral and a Moslem's--indeed, it is often not easy even if you have a lifelong knowledge of the country. The finest qualities of Islam--and they are many--they have rejected, and for so doing they have suffered unthinkable hardships and persecutions. Bad as things are to-day, they were far, far worse in the days before the British Occupation, when the Christians were at the mercy of the fanatical Moslems."

"It is such a pity that the native Christian population is the one which no one trusts in this country. The Mohammedans are respected, the Copts are despised. I find that, even in connection with my brother's work. The brains and industry of the country seem to belong to the Copts; the honour and reliability to the Moslems."

"I know," Hada.s.sah said. "And that's what my husband and I are fighting against. He wants to prove that the people of any country and of any religion, even the English," Hada.s.sah's eyes twinkled, "will become degraded and untrustworthy in time, if they are persecuted and oppressed. With the Christian element in Egypt, it has been a case of every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost. If we were to take some Coptic children and Mohammedan children, of the same social grade out here, and had them educated in England as Christians, you would soon see that it is not the Copts who ought to be despised, but their intolerant oppressors and persecutors." Hada.s.sah smiled. "You know, Miss Lampton, how easy it is to be good and strong when one is trusted and loved. Love makes finer, better women of us."

Margaret rose from her seat. "You have done me so much good," she said. "I feel as if my world had been re-made."

"That's splendid!" Hada.s.sah said. "I always try to remember that it is a privilege to suffer. It is one of the divine fires which tests us; suffering links us to the great brotherhood. You wouldn't choose to be outside it. The older we grow the more we realize that it is suffering, not happiness, which makes the whole world kin."

Margaret's silence, which often was more eloquent than other women's speech, told Hada.s.sah that she agreed. Suffering was teaching her its lessons.

"When may we expect you?" Hada.s.sah said. "The sooner the better, don't you think?"

"May I come in a day or two? I have some business to do for my brother--I have promised to see one or two people for him; he is going home very soon." She looked round the hall through which they were pa.s.sing. "I can't imagine myself ever really living here. It looks as if it had all been created by the wand of some magician for a princess in a fairytale. What a contrast to our hut in the Valley!"

"You like it better than a new house in the European settlement? You think I chose wisely?"

"Of course I do. Who wouldn't?"

"This house costs us no more than a good flat would in the European part of the city, but you have to come through the native quarters to get to it, remember. Many people would object to that."

"I hate the European quarter of Cairo," Margaret said. "It seems to me so vulgar and degenerate. The native quarter is just what it sets out to be, no better and no worse."

"Well, you must come and stay with us--my husband will enjoy showing you the hidden beauties of Cairo. He is devoted to it."

Margaret's ears caught the sound of water. It was coming from a tall fountain which was playing in the centre of the outer hall. Above it was a pendentive roof, richly carved and coloured. A suggestion of turquoise-blue and the gleam of iridescent tiles showed through the clear water in the octagonal basin set in the floor. The jets of water came from a large ball of blue faience resting on the top of a slender spiral column. The fountain was only one of the beautiful features of that Eastern mansion which Margaret noticed as her hostess conducted her to the inner courtyard.

"How enchanting it all is!" Margaret said. "I feel much too prosaic to imagine spending my everyday working hours in it." Her life in the hut seemed better suited to her practical nature.

"I love it," Hada.s.sah said. "And I like its emptiness. That is the native idea. We have tried not to make it look like a mediaeval museum, not to stuff it up with things. It's a great temptation."