our arms if you had been guilty, if
Millicent had told the truth?" The words conveyed a world of meaning
to Michael. "I have often grumbled, Mike--I have thought that you
might have let me hear the story from your own lips, or by letter. I
know that in his heart Freddy always thought you were only to be blamed
for allowing her to stay in your camp--I know he never really believed
that you had arranged the meeting, or that you were her lover."

Michael grasped her two hands in his, tightly. "I never was, Meg, I
never was! I hated her for coming, I tried to get rid of her."

"I knew it, Mike--deep, deep down I knew it. But it hurt." She leaned
against him. "Oh, how it hurt, dearest! And you never wrote or
explained--that was what I found hardest to bear. I suppose you were
so certain that I trusted you that you never thought about what others
might say; but love makes us exacting, jealous, and you might have
written, dearest! Then Freddy would have known. How could I make him
understand all that my heart knew? How can one make others see the
things which come from within?"

Michael put his arms round her. "My darling," he said, "I did write, I
wrote often. I wrote directly Millicent appeared in the desert; I
wrote again before I was ill. You know how many letters go astray--you
know how many were intercepted by German spies before the war broke
out."

"You were ill?" Meg started. "I knew you were, I told Freddy you were
ill. But Millicent spoke as if you were in such perfect health that I
had to abandon the conviction."

Her voice was an apology.

"I was so ill with fever," Michael said, "that I wasn't able to write,
and the faithful Abdul couldn't. Like many Arabs, he can speak a
smattering, and a very fair one, of three or four languages, but he
can't write a line in any one of them. As soon as I was strong enough
to travel I went back to the Valley."

"Oh, did you?" He felt Margaret tremble as she said the words.

"I went back to find our Eden a barren desert, Meg, no sign of either
Freddy or you in it. It was horrible. I started off to Cairo in hopes
of learning from the Iretons where you had gone to, to discover what
you had heard of Millicent." His pressure of Meg's hands explained the
full meaning of his words. "But they had left Cairo--it was very
hot--so I returned to England by way of Italy. In Naples I had a
slight relapse--I had to wait there for some time, until I was able