There was a King in Egypt Part 23

"Really cared!" he said. "Why, you have taught me what that word means. You'll never doubt that?"

"No," Meg said. "Not now. I know this is new to us both. I won't doubt anything ever again."

"She was friendless," he said. "And for some strange reason she thought herself fond of me."

"What a very strange thing to feel! I really can't understand it.

Fancy a woman feeling fond of a thing that walks on its head!"

"Don't laugh, Meg. She does, or thinks she does."

Meg looked into his eyes. "I'll never doubt you, Mike," she said, "if you'll tell me, under these dear stars, which have made you confess your love for me, that there has been no deep feeling on your side, that there is nothing that matters between you."

Mike took her two hands. "On my side, there has been nothing but friends.h.i.+p, I swear it," he said. "I never, never desired anything else. There has been nothing that matters."

"I'm so glad," Meg said. "You're so high, Mike, so awfully high in my love. Your drifting is all a part of it. I love you for all your mad dreams and dear unworldliness, for your struggling and striving for the highest. I should hate to have to believe that you were less high than I imagined."

"But I kissed her, Meg," he said, abruptly. The truth was drawn from him, as his confession of love had been, torn from him by some power outside himself. He hated giving her pain, and it had been scarcely necessary if Margaret had been other than she was.

It had not mattered--yet if truth was beauty and beauty was G.o.d, and his religion was that the kingdom of G.o.d is within us, how could he hold it back, this deed which, little as it might seem in the eyes of most people, had been for him a thing which did matter?

"You kissed her!" Meg said. Something that was not love was now bursting her throat. Her voice was uncertain. It hurt Michael like a thrust from a sharp knife.

"Yes," he said. "I kissed her, more than once."

"Her lips?" Meg asked.

"Yes, Meg, her lips."

"You kissed her as you have kissed me to-night?"

"Good heavens, no!" he cried. "Meg, how could you think it?"

"Life is strange," Meg said, a little wearily. "When everything seems most beautiful, some ugliness shows its head . . . the light gets so dim."

"Dearest," Mike said, "do you remember what you said on that morning when we found each other again? You said, 'Let's go forward; things are explained.'"

"Yes, I remember," she said, and as she spoke happiness shone in her eyes like a flame relit; "yes, I said regrets were foolish, I said I understood. But . . ." she hesitated; the thought of Mike's lips pressed to any other woman's than her own stifled her. She was his so completely, that any other man's lips pressed to hers, except Freddy's, would nauseate her. Yet Mike had kissed Millicent. Was it that night on the terrace, or the evening at the Pyramids? she wondered.

"We have gone forward, Meg. Millicent"--Meg s.h.i.+vered as he said the woman's Christian name--"was splendid at the Pyramids, she really was."

Again Meg s.h.i.+vered. Splendid! How, she wondered, had she been splendid? Meg hated being an inquisitor, yet she had to know; it was her right.

"Then it was not at the Pyramids that you kissed her?" she asked.

"No, no!" Mike said. "Of course not!" He looked at her in wonder.

"If it had been, I should not have dared to kiss you to-night."

"It's nice of you to say that, dear. Oh, Mike," she said tenderly, "you mean the world to me! I shall grow older by years for each moment that we don't trust one another! I should have known, I should never have doubted! You've chosen a very jealous woman, Mike."

"If you'd gone off to the Pyramids with some one whom I disliked as much as you dislike Millicent, I'd have been furious!" He felt Meg s.h.i.+ver. He divined the reason; he would not let that hurt her again.

"You hate her, Meg," he said. "Just in the way I'd hate a man who . . ." he paused.

"Who what?" Meg said.

"Don't ask me," he said. "I never forgot you for one moment when I was with her at the Pyramids. You kept close to me, dearest. And the other episode is past and forgotten--it was just a little bit of vulgarity, Meg, nothing more."

"Since we made friends, there's been nothing between you that would make your kisses to me a mere vulgarity, Mike?"

"Nothing," he said. "And so far as I can help it, I will never see Mrs. Mervill again."

Meg's eyes spoke her thanks. His avoidance of the woman's Christian name showed his sensitiveness to her feelings. Speaking of her as "Mrs. Mervill" put her pleasantly far away.

"I was weak and insincere--my kisses were really a dishonour to any woman, and I hated myself."

While Meg admired her lover for refraining from the excuse which Adam was not ashamed to offer His Maker, what was human in her longed to make him denounce the woman she hated. She had tried to provoke a justification of his own conduct from his lips by telling her what she felt to be the truth--that the woman had tempted him.

It was getting late; they turned towards the hut.

"We must go in," Meg said. "Freddy will be wondering what has become of us." She turned swiftly and took Michael's hands in hers. "Until after the tomb is opened, let us remain as we were--I mean, don't let's give Freddy any more to think about. Isn't he the dearest brother in the world?" she said. "I love every glittering hair of his head!"

"Very well, you dearest woman," Mike said. "Besides, we've only confessed that we love each other--I've asked for no promise, Meg--I've no right to. Remember, you are free, absolutely free--this old drifter isn't to count."

"Absolutely free!" Meg laughed. "Just as if words made us free! Four walls do not a prison make! You know perfectly well that I am tied hand and foot and bound all round about with the cords of your love. I can never be free again, never belong only to myself, as I used to do."

"And will you remember that whatever happens to me, Meg, it will be just the same?"

She knew that he was referring to his mystical journey, his unsettled future.

"It would be so heavenly," she said dreamily, "if we could be content to sit down and be happy and just live for the enjoyment of each other's love!"

"You'd despise me if I did." He looked round at the eternal valley, resting in the stillness of death.

"I suppose I should," Meg said. "I suppose I want you to take up arms for what Freddy calls your 'Utopian Rule of Righteousness,' your world-state."

"I think we should both feel slackers, just enjoying ourselves intellectually, dear, when we could, if we chose, let a few others into the great kingdom of G.o.d. You and I don't understand why they don't all see it as we do, why they don't realize the things Akhnaton knew three thousand years ago. We wonder why they remain contented with a religion of limited dogmas and theological forms. They don't see the obvious in their striving after doctrines. They fail to see that G.o.d is too big for their churches."

"You see these things," Meg said. "I'm only creeping behind you."

"You see that if we understand G.o.d and give Him His proper place, He'd rule us, His throne would govern a world-state. His love would be the law of mankind."

"I know," Margaret said. "It's beautiful, it's what ought to be, if poor mortals were not human beings."

"Mortals are the best things in G.o.d's kingdom--it's all been worked up for their enjoyment and benefit."

"I know, dear, I know, but you and I are just you and I, and we have just found love, and it is so wonderful, I want to enjoy it."

"Doesn't love make it all the more forcible, Meg? The closeness of G.o.d all the more certain? The weaving of the threads of His beautiful fabric all the more golden?--Akhnaton's great 'Lord of Fortune,' the 'Master of Things Ordained,' the 'Chance which gives Life,' the 'Origin of Fate,' call it what you will--the power which brought us here, you and I."

"And if we didn't follow that clear voice, Mike, whose rule is righteousness, why should He allow it?"