to Akhnaton when spring was in the
year; the birds were His visible form. God smiled to him when the blue
lotus covered the waters of his lake in the garden-city of his ideal
capital.

To the Moslems God is in the heavens; His immovable seat is there. To
the ecstatic visionaries who live, as his old friend lived, so cut off
from their natural selves as to be unconscious of their physical body,
these are the delights of paradise, seen through the eyes of mystics.

Michael, who passionately loved the world and all of God that is in it,
wished that they could see that the joys of paradise are everywhere
around us. No visionary's eyes are needed to enjoy their beauty.

The university was now far behind him; he was retracing his steps to
modern Cairo, where the calm of Islam would seem like a peaceful dream.
The domes of the mosques looked like stationary balloons, made of
delicate lace, floating in the blue sky, the tall minarets like lotus
buds coming up from a vast lake. A soft mist was etherealizing the
bald realities of the native city. Only here and there a vivid patch
of colour--the jade-green dome of a saint's tomb, the clear blue or
orange of an Arab boy's shirt, the brightly-appliqued _portiere_ of a
public bath, or the purple robes of a student of the Khedivial
School--these, in their Eastern setting, studded the scene with
precious gems.

Thrust back again into the vortex of noise and striving, Michael felt
as "lonely as a wandering cloud." His interview with his old friend
had not soothed him; it had neither helped him to determine him in his
views, or to deter him from them. His thoughts seemed a part of the
surging street. Michael Ireton's counsel was still the only thing
which he could grasp. He would go and find himself in the desert.

But mingled with this idea came the two other influences--the old man's
vision, in which he had seen him journeying into the desert in search
of some hidden treasure--and now many visionaries in Egypt had not
found treasure, but had lost their lives and their minds on journeys
after imaginary gold?--and Margaret's influence, Margaret, who had been
given a message for him--of that he felt convinced. She, at least,
could be trusted, with her sane, practical Lampton brain. She had made
up no fable. Her vision had not been the result of her imagination.
And then again came Freddy's voice:

"I should always distrust the progress of people who walk on their
heads.