with
Arabic so as to be able to talk to the natives and understand things
Mohammedan, but the very fact that Arabic was not going to help her to
read Egyptian hieroglyphics, or understand anything at all about
ancient Egypt, acted as an irritant to her brain, and retarded her
working powers.

"And when my brain is annoyed, or it feels impatient," she said, "bang
goes my poor intelligence--it simply won't be hurried; it will only
work in its own deliberate way."

Michael declared that the way it was working was good enough for
him--rather too good, in fact.

Under such circumstances, the intimacy between Margaret and her
brother's best friend naturally ripened very quickly. Margaret felt as
though she had known him for months instead of weeks, and more than
once she had wondered what life would be like without him. He was much
more imaginative than Freddy and more intellectually excitable and
curious. He theorized and perhaps romanced where Freddy was apt to
accept only proven facts. Michael's temperament was the exact
stimulant which Margaret's brain required.

That Michael did his share of hard work Margaret had realized when she
accompanied him one day to the scene of his labours. She had had to
bend almost double and crawl down a steep shaft, of slippery, sliding
debris, to what she thought must be halfway through the world, and pick
her way over the rubbish in a semi-excavated chamber in the vast tomb.
Some of the chambers were full of huge stones, which had fallen in with
the roof. It was in a smaller chamber, where the heat was so great
that she could scarcely breathe, that Michael spent his mornings and
the greater part of his afternoons.

The heat of Egypt, concentrated for centuries and centuries, seemed to
scorch Margaret's face when she entered it. The building was like a
temple with side chapels. In one side chapel Michael sat himself down
to copy a wide band of gaily-painted decorations, which formed a dado
round its three walls.

* * * * * *

On this particular night Margaret had returned from a long walk with
Michael. They had left the low level of the valley and its winding
white road and had climbed up on to the heights of the Sahara. It had
pleased Margaret to feel that her feet were pressing the sands of the
great African desert. She had never dreamed that their valley was
actually a rift in the rocks of the Sahara, that ocean of sand which
travels o