Norma Lorimer

“ 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 passion, 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." ”

“ As Abdul came to his master's side, Michael saw his eyes linger on the Englishwoman's beauty. He knew that to the Eastern, mixture of mystic and fanatic as he was, her freshness and fairness were like the scent of white jasmine to his nostrils.
This woman, who loved his master—for already Millicent's dragoman had confided her secret to him—was very rarely beautiful, and in his eyes very desirable; but she was false. His eyes had instantly seen beyond. Because she was false she interested him. She was not like other Englishwomen; she was not like the girl who was the sister of Effendi Lampton. ”

“ Millicent said; she had noticed the coldness of Margaret's voice. "I'd love to stay—that's to say, if it won't really be giving you any trouble—you're looking fagged." She turned to Michael. "What have you been doing with her?" Millicent spoke as if she really cared. "You're too young for such tired eyes, for these lines," she touched Meg's eyes and pulled open the corners. Meg's shrinking gave her satisfaction. "Don't let Egypt ruin your looks, my dear—a woman is only half a woman when her beauty fades; she's only a woman in the eyes of one half of mankind while it lasts." ”

“ But Michael Amory had no desire to encourage any thoughts which gave woman a place in his mind. The very visualizing of Lampton as a girl, comical as it had been, had forced before his eyes another face and another form which he had been striving to forget. Whenever he was idle, and too often when he was busy over some piece of work which ought to have engrossed his entire thoughts, her haunting charm and beauty would suddenly become more real and vivid than the bright blues and greens and reds of the pigments on the white walls of the tomb upon which he was at work. ”

“ Michael's thoughts were of his world-state, his religion of Love, the closeness of God.
"Every star in the sky seems to know about our love," Meg said. "And I think the waiting silence has been expecting this."
"I know," Michael said. "To me love seems to be crowding the valley and flying down from the hills and searching the stillness. Life's become a new kind of thing altogether, Meg, we'll have to help each other."
"That's just what I feel. It's alarming to find yourself quite a different human being in less than an hour, to have suddenly developed unsuspected elements in your nature." ”

“ In the desert, where a traveller begins his day at dawn and ends it at sundown, where the slow tread of his camel is only interrupted by a short halt for the midday meal, and the days roll on and into each other as the sand-dunes roll on and into succeeding sand-dunes, the sense of hours and days becomes lost. With nothing in front of the eye but an infinity of sky and distance and nothing active in that distance but dazzling heat, moving over the desert, the mind becomes a part of the intense solitude. ”

“ On the desert march Michael generally went at the head of his cavalcade. He liked the wide sweep for the eye, the great expanse, undisturbed, even by such picturesque figures as the natives on their camels. Over and over again he rode for hours in a beautiful dream; he gave himself up to the intoxication of immensity. At such times the thought would come to him that if he turned the universe upside-down, nothing would happen. The high heavens would be made of golden sand and the limitless earth of bright blue—that would be all the difference ”

“ Mike said. "They lose their individuality."
"Here they are a part of Egypt, that ancient, undying Egypt! You and I, like those dogs, Mike, won't have even bones to record us after three thousand years. Our bowels of tenderness will not lie intact in alabaster jars! Oh, Mike, take me in your arms! I want humanity, I want the things of to-day, I want all which that mummy has ridiculed! I hated it, Mike! I love life and your love! I want to forget that we are here to-day and gone to-morrow, mere human gnats."
Mike held her close to his heart. Meg could hear it beating. Oh, beloved humanity! ”

“ Meg could not have a better husband.
But so far no such thought had entered Mike's head, nor yet Margaret's. She was too interested and busy in her new life to think of love; she was only conscious of living as she had never lived before, and as she would have asked to live if she had possessed a wishing-ring. Every hour and minute of her days were a delight. To be with her best "pal" Freddy in Egypt seemed too good to be true, and added to that, there was this unexpected pleasure, the friendship and companionship of the nicest man she had ever met. ”

“ I want you all alone, Michael, in the loneliest part of the loneliest desert in the world, and I want as many kisses as there are stars in the heavens—kisses that only my love and Egypt can teach you how to give!"
"I must leave you," Michael said again, "if you will speak like that."
He got up to go. Mrs. Mervill also rose from her reclining position on her long deck-chair, and sat upright.
"I do, I do!" she said, while she held up her beautiful lips to his face. "There is no one to see, there is no one to care! I want a kiss for every star there is in the heavens." ”

“ Something in Millicent's eyes drove him into speech. He, too, knew the throbbing silence, the solitude that thunders, the emptiness that is full of passion.
"Well, first look at that tent and at those lazy, straight, brown-limbed women—they are just a bit of nature. Summer and winter, autumn and spring, will never change the scene. Look at that ocean of sand, and the moving heat, passing like a wave over the desert. Take off your blue glasses, Mike, and dare to look at the sun. Face your great God Aton—look Him in the face."
Michael was silent, but he took off his blue glasses. ”

“ For one whole night she had faced the certain fact that Millicent had camped in the desert with Michael. Anyone who has considered the ceaseless workings of the human brain will understand what no pen could describe—the countless arguments for and against her lover's honour which came and went in an endless rotation in Margaret's mind.
She was glad when daylight flooded the room and she could get up and take the definite steps which would settle her doom. There is nothing so unendurable as lying in bed, a victim to miserable thoughts. ”

“ The going and the coming of the sun throws the land of the Pharaohs, the kingdom of Ra, the great Sun God, whose cradle was at Heliopolis, back to the days when Egypt was the world; to the days when the sun governed the religion of her people; to the days when civilization had barely touched the Mediterranean and the world knew not Rome; back again to the days when the Nile, the Mother of Life, bordered by bands of fertile, food-giving land, had not as yet sheltered the infant Moses in her reeds. Dawn in Egypt is the dawn of civilization. ”

“ Meg's tears had dried very quickly. She was strong again. "I don't see how you can speak like that. You told me that Michael was straight as a die—you know you did."
"But I said he was weak—I told you that, too, didn't I?"
"If being human is weak, then I suppose he is. I never met a man who was a saint. And if believing that we are all more good than bad is weak, then I admit his lack of strength. It is his humility that makes it impossible for him to think evil of anyone. I have often proved it. Almost any man is a better man than himself in his own eyes." ”

“ If Michael was a carrier, she had no chance, unless she was one of those rare people who are immune from the disease. She did not think she was, because when she was last vaccinated, when she was fifteen, she had been very, very ill and sick. She felt physically tired, for her brain was quick. It was imagining horrible things. She was visualizing her own beauty spoilt, her fair skin deeply pitted with pock-marks, her colour all gone. The disease would take the glitter from her hair, the glow from her personality. She knew the result of smallpox. ”

“ Freddy rose from the table. "Now, look here," he said, "try to speak dispassionately. How can I, as your sole male guardian, countenance an engagement between you and Michael while there is only too much ground for belief that this story is true? I've not only heard it from the natives."
"You're wholly without reason. You just said you didn't believe it!"
The words flashed from Meg's lips like the fire from a gun.
"I find it hard to believe. One always wants to hear two sides of a story. If Michael can swear that it is not true——"
"There is only one side to this story—that it is a lie." ”

“ Since his Hijrah, as Freddy called his flight from the valley, he had ceased to think about his own standing on his head. He had accepted the fact that a man must work out his own life as truly as he must work out his own salvation. To be a weak copy of Freddy would be contemptible; it would be better to be an out-and-out failure and drifter for the rest of his days. As a failure he would at least be living the life he best understood, the life which to him seemed fuller than the lives lived by successful materialists. ”

“ Margaret was resting against Michael, as open about her love for him as any 'Arriet. She could think of Freddy without any feeling of guilt or even doubt of his approval. The things which come from within cannot be explained by forces from without. It was not what Michael had done or had said which had banished her pride and told her of his faithfulness. It was the consciousness which came from within, the consciousness which had always fought back the forces from without. She had not felt one qualm of conscience, for Freddy was understanding and approving. ”