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Updated: June 9, 2025
When he had finished, Mrs. Mervill let her hand slip down his coat-sleeve she had laid it there as she spoke to him until it rested on his wrist; her fingers were caressing. "Tell me," she said, looking up into his face with a winning and soft expression, "what have you been doing with yourself since we parted? You have been much in my thoughts never out of them, indeed."
She felt like a criminal writing a warrant for her own arrest, but as the thing had to be done, it was best to get it over soon as possible. "Last night I saw Millicent Mervill and what she told me leaves me no choice. I will keep my promise and go back to England. A boat goes next Tuesday; if I can book a passage I shall go by it. Until then I will stay with Hadassah Ireton.
"But never mind better luck next time! And we had some lovely dances in the early part of the evening." Her words, without meaning it, implied that before she had been introduced to Mrs. Mervill, they had been happy. They had risen at Margaret's instigation from their table and were wending their way out of the supper-room.
"I'm not blaming him I'd have done the same. It sounded beastly, the whole story. Hang Millicent Mervill!"
Michael had, of course, given but few details of either experience. The mystic's counsel was not, he felt, suited for discussion and certainly he had no wish to annoy Margaret by unnecessary remarks about Millicent Mervill.
Presently she heard Michael say: "Well, I'll leave you to rest until lunch-time I can't idle while Freddy is working like a nigger. You'll be all right, I know, with your book and a cigarette." Margaret slipped round to the back of the hut; she did not want to speak to Michael; she was thankful that he had left Mrs. Mervill, but his voice had been too kind, too nice.
Fallen idols never shattered his belief; they were simply forgotten. Since Michael had met the beautiful Mrs. Mervill, Freddy had noticed that he had fits of abstraction, and that instead of working overtime, as was his habit, he was now as prompt as the fellahin to "down tools" at the precise moment. Freddy "had no use" for the woman. His practical mind had summed her up at a glance.
Mervill neither saw her nor heard her footsteps; Michael had both seen and heard her. Margaret, thinking that he was alone, walked quickly towards him. Suddenly she heard a hidden voice say caressingly, "I will promise you anything you like, Michael mine, and keep it, too, if you will try to see me as often as ever you can. Remember how lonely I am, and that I shall live for your visits."
Alone in the open space in front of the hotel, Michael stood and cursed his own weakness. Why had he stooped to those lips? Why had he allowed himself to be unworthy of his intimacy with Margaret? He was sorry for Mrs. Mervill, for he believed her stories about her husband's drunkenness and degrading habits, as he almost believed that she had for some strange reason fallen in love with himself.
"She may have followed him. If she is with him, she is self-invited." Hadassah Ireton interrupted her. "Even Mrs. Mervill could scarcely do that!" "My brother says that I may wait in Cairo until we can find definite proofs one way or another. A letter may come from Michael at any moment.
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