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As she asked herself the question, the bright rays of Aton shone round a figure in khaki; she saw Michael clearly and beautifully. He was illuminated by a bright and shining light. Margaret remained motionless and spell-bound. Her visualizing was more than a mere mental reproduction of an imaginary scene.
"He spoke of someone as God, and said beautiful things about Him . . . this God, of everlasting mercy . . . those were his words. . . . Oh, I remember the name!" she cried. "It was Aton it seemed to be the name of his God. He spoke of Aton as St. Francis spoke of Christ. Aton was in the birds and fishes and flowers and in the cool streams." Michael turned round and grasped Margaret's hand.
And yet Michael thought that, beautiful as it all was in theory, wonderful as was the indescribable power of Islam, it gave few, if any, of its children the true conception of God. They learned nothing of the tender Father, of the beauty of Aton. In Islam there is no consciousness of God in the song of the thrush to its mate, no sacredness in the bud of a lily.
But they are all striving for the one and same thing to render worship to the Divine Creator, to sit in the Light of Aton." "But the sun," Margaret said she pointed to the fiery ball on the horizon "I thought your divine Akhnaton was a sun-worshipper?"
Gilgamesh was rated, with reservations, as a civilized planet though not on a level with Odin or Isis or Baldur or Marduk or Aton or any of the other worlds which had maintained the culture of the Terran Federation uninterruptedly. Perhaps Gilgamesh deserved more credit; its people had undergone two centuries of darkness and pulled themselves out of it by their bootstraps.
Later on, when he became the warrior prophet, he must have visualized the heavens as the background of his banner, and taken the evening star and the crescent moon as his symbols the star and the crescent of Islam." Michael paused. "In the same way, the full rays of the sun became the symbol of Aton, Akhnaton's god and loving father." "Your friend?"
"Then my love is no hindrance?" "God is Love, God is Happiness, God is Beauty." There was infinite understanding and tenderness in the words, but Meg's honesty was persistent. "My love is not that sort of love, but it is very dear to me. It is selfish and human. It is wrapped round with natural desires, my own personal wants." "Is there any love which is not of Aton?
The light was breaking over the valley not the sun's light, the cold light of dawn. The "heat of Aton" was still withheld. A blush which was invisible to Michael tinged Meg's clear skin. Her dream had been beautiful, vivid. It had illuminated her world again. "It was nothing very coherent. I saw no vision, as I did before." Her words were spoken guardedly. "It was the lesson the dream revealed."
My thoughts were unjust, unkind, so my world was unkind, unjust. I made it." "The light which is Aton," Michael said. "If we wish to enjoy happiness, we must sit in the light. We must make our own happiness." "In the fullness and glory of Aton." "God, I suppose you mean," Margaret said.
He stood in the centre of long shafts of sunshine; they played round his head like the rays of Aton. Her terror of death vanished as swiftly as it had come. This was the light which guarded Michael in battle. A super-elation dispersed the thought of the brief married life which might be hers, that she might be stepping into widowhood even while she repeated her vows.
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