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." She laughed. "I never thought I
could be such a complete fool, dearest."

Michael kissed her rapturously. "Let's be big, big fools, beloved,
let's enjoy this thing that's come to us." He paused. Again he looked
troubled and serious.

"Why trouble?" Meg said. "I know just what's in your heart. You love
me and I love you, and I trust you. You weren't ready for any
engagement--you never thought of marriage. Well, let all that come in
good time if it is meant to be. Let us be content with love for the
present. It's surely big enough." She sighed. "It's tired me, Mike,
it's so enormous."

"But, dearest, I meant to talk to you about very different things.
Love just caught me. . . . I was taken unawares . . . some look of
yours did it, or some trick of the stars. . . I can't tell which.
Anyhow, it's done."

"Tell me," she said. "All that you had meant to talk about. It's not
too late. We must be friends as well as lovers now."

"It was about my visit to el-Azhar in Cairo."

"Yes?" Meg said. Her breath came more quickly.

"My old friend told me the most extraordinary things. He had seen
visions."

Their eyes met. Meg's held a question; they asked: "Had they any
connection with my vision?"

"Yes," Michael said to her unspoken question. "He saw me on a long
desert journey. I was often surrounded by a wonderful light--a light
which, he said, had come from one of God's messengers, who was never
far from me. He said he saw the messenger of God always in the midst
of a great light, like the light of the sun, that he resembled no
mortal he had ever seen, or any king he had ever been shown in his
dreams."

Meg drew in her breath nervously. "Had he ever heard of Akhnaton,
Mike?"

"No, never. He is quite unread, totally unlearned and ignorant of all
except the teachings of the Koran."

Margaret's quick breathing showed her excitement. Michael, too, became
nervous.

"He saw me always in the light of this great messenger, a light, he
said, which surrounded his figure with rays like the rays of the sun."

"Just as I saw him," Meg said. "How