rals, never tell your own shirt
what you want kept a secret. Diaries are dangerous things, Meg."

"I wrote it in French," Meg said. "I thought only the servants would
stoop to reading it and they can't read French."

"Next time, try invisible ink. In Egypt, once a thing is written or
told, it is public property."

"I scarcely write anything now," she said. "I feel as if some spy will
see it, and the dry bones of a diary never interest me."

As Freddy was leaving the sitting-room--he was going to bed for a
couple of hours before he began work again--Margaret said to him:

"Just tell me before you go, where you first heard the report about
Michael, and from whom you heard it."

"One or two days ago," he said. "I heard a smouldering gossip about it
going on amongst the workmen. They'd got wind of it somehow. No one
ever knows how these things begin. Then I met young King from
Professor L----'s camp, and he told me the whole story. He knew
Millicent very well. He said she's not what you could call an immoral
woman so much as a woman without morals. He confesses he never met
anyone in the least like her before, and he rather prides himself on
his knowledge of the world--he would have us believe that he has seen a
devil of a lot. He wondered at a man of Michael's refined temperament
taking her into the desert in the way he has done."

"He never took her," Meg said. "Isn't it hateful, Freddy, hearing
people make these assertions about our Mike?"

"That's what I meant," Freddy said, "when I told you that I hated your
name being mixed up with his."

"Oh, that's not what troubles me. No one knows me out here, or my
affairs. I meant that it's such a wicked libel on Michael, who's not
here to defend himself."

"But if she's there with him, what can you expect the world to say, to
believe?"

"If she followed him and joined him, it wouldn't be very easy to shake
her off, would it?"

Freddy smiled. "You're right there--the fair Millicent wouldn't go
because she wasn't wanted!"

"I often ask myself why and how we tolerated her."

"Did we?" Freddy laughed.

"Well, yes, we did. Even I found myself liking her that day after
lunch. I began to wonder if I had always been too hard on her, if I
had had my judgment perverted by my jealousy."

"Surely you're not really jealous of Millicent?" Freddy paused. "That
is, if you are confident that Michael is not with her at the present
moment?"

"I am confi