Part 21 (1/2)

”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 friends.h.i.+p 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 friends.h.i.+p 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.