e it, every word of it! I left you
to your fate when you were in danger, I fled from the camp with but one
idea in my head--my own safety, my desire to get as far as I could from
the infection of smallpox. I carried the hateful disease with me; I am
so disfigured that you must never see me. Never!" Her words ended in
a low cry of self-pity.

"My God!" Michael said. "Are you speaking the truth! Did you get
smallpox?" He knew that the blame was partly his.

"Yes, but don't look at me. I can't bear it. Anything but that, oh
not that!" Michael had stooped to raise her a veil.

His eyes met Margaret's. "Poor soul!" he said. "Poor little soul!"

"Yes, fate has punished me," Millicent said. "You can do no more."

Michael groaned. "We have not talked of it all yet, Margaret," he said
miserably, "the horror of the smallpox."

"Millicent has told me about it, Michael." She tried to smile. "It is
a thing of the past. What good will talking do? We are happy again."

Millicent turned to Michael. "I have told her a very little," she
said. "And now I have something which I must tell you. When I saw her
in Cairo I told her that I had been with you, I told her that you would
write to me, I inferred that you and I were lovers."

Michael bent his head. He was innocent of any deed of unfaithfulness,
but what of his desires? What of the night when Margaret's presence
had saved him? He wondered if she was conscious of the part she had
played in his renunciation.

"And you still trusted me?" Michael's words were so full of gratitude
and wonder that Margaret's veins were flooded with happiness. How
greatly he had been tempted!

"I remembered my promise. More than once it seemed to me that I
succeeded in being very near you."

Her eyes questioned him. He understood; his eyes answered her.

"I told her that I had been with you," Millicent said, "but not for how
long. She never dreamed that my coming was quite unknown to you, that
I was with you for so short a time, that you hated my presence in the
camp. How well she knew you!"

Margaret turned to Michael. "Yes, I knew him," she said. "Thank God,
I knew him! We learnt to know each other in the Valley, and I think I
realized the situation better than you thought I did."

"But I must tell you, I must show you even more than you dream of how
true and loyal he has been."

"No, no, please don't," Margaret said. "Michael has told me all I want
to kno