Then, turning to me, she too spoke:

“Malcolm, you have spoken of the deaths that came from the poor Queen;
or rather that justly came from meddling with her arrangements and
thwarting her purpose. Do you not think that, in putting it as you have
done, you have been unjust? Who would not have done just as she did? Remember she was fighting for her life! Ay, and for more than her
life! For life, and love, and all the glorious possibilities of that
dim future in the unknown world of the North which had such enchanting
hopes for her! Do you not think that she, with all the learning of her
time, and with all the great and resistless force of her mighty nature,
had hopes of spreading in a wider way the lofty aspirations of her
soul! That she hoped to bring to the conquering of unknown worlds, and
using to the advantage of her people, all that she had won from sleep
and death and time; all of which might and could have been frustrated
by the ruthless hand of an assassin or a thief. Were it you, in such
case would you not struggle by all means to achieve the object of your
life and hope; whose possibilities grew and grew in the passing of
those endless years? Can you think that that active brain was at rest
during all those weary centuries, whilst her free soul was flitting
from world to world amongst the boundless regions of the stars? Had
these stars in their myriad and varied life no lessons for her; as they
have had for us since we followed the glorious path which she and her
people marked for us, when they sent their winged imaginations circling
amongst the lamps of the night!”

Here she paused. She too was overcome, and the welling tears ran down
her cheeks. I was myself more moved than I can say. This was indeed my
Margaret; and in the consciousness of her presence my heart leapt. Out
of my happiness came boldness, and I dared to say now what I had feared
would be impossible:  something which would call the attention of Mr.
Trelawny to what I imagined was the dual existence of his daughter. As
I took Margaret’s hand in mine and kissed it, I said to her father:

“Why, sir! she couldn’t speak more eloquently if the very spirit of
Queen Tera was with her to animate her and suggest thoughts!”

Mr. Trelawny’s answer simply overwhelmed me with surprise. It
manifested to me that he too had gone through just such a process of
thought as my own. “And what if it was; if it is! I know well that the spirit of her
mother is within her. If in addition there be the spirit of that great
and wondrous Queen, then she would be no less dear to me, but doubly
dear! Do not have fear for her, Malcolm Ross; at least have no more
fear than you may have for the rest of us!”  Margaret took up the
theme, speaking so quickly that her words seemed a continuation of her
father’s, rather than an interruption of them. “Have no special fear for me, Malcolm. Queen Tera knows, and will
offer us no harm. I know it! I know it, as surely as I am lost in the
depth of my own love for you!”

There was something in her voice so strange to me that I looked quickly
into her eyes. They were bright as ever, but veiled to my seeing the
inward thought behind them as are the eyes of a caged lion. Then the two other men came in, and the subject changed. Chapter XVIII

The Lesson of the “Ka”


That night we all went to bed early. The next night would be an
anxious one, and Mr. Trelawny thought that we should all be fortified
with what sleep we could get. The day, too, would be full of work. Everything in connection with the Great Experiment would have to be
gone over, so that at the last we might not fail from any unthought-of
flaw in our working. We made, of course, arrangements for summoning aid
in case such should be needed; but I do not think that any of us had
any real apprehension of danger. Certainly we had no fear of such
danger from violence as we had had to guard against in London during
Mr. Trelawny’s long trance. For my own part I felt a strange sense of relief in the matter. I had
accepted Mr. Trelawny’s reasoning that if the Queen were indeed such as
we surmised—such as indeed we now took for granted—there would not be
any opposition on her part; for we were carrying out her own wishes to
the very last. So far I was at ease—far more at ease than earlier in
the day I should have thought possible; but there were other sources of
trouble which I could not blot out from my mind. Chief amongst them
was Margaret’s strange condition. If it was indeed that she had in her
own person a dual existence, what might happen when the two existences
became one? Again, and again, and again I turned this matter over in my
mind, till I could have shrieked out in nervous anxiety. It was no
consolation to me to remember that Margaret was herself satisfied, and
her father acquiescent. Love is, after all, a selfish thing; and it
throws a black shadow on anything between which and the light it
stands. I seemed to hear the hands go round the dial of the clock; I
saw darkness turn to gloom, and gloom to grey, and grey to light
without pause or hindrance to the succession of my miserable feelings. At last, when it was decently possible without the fear of disturbing
others, I got up. I crept along the passage to find if all was well
with the others; for we had arranged that the door of each of our rooms
should be left slightly open so that any sound of disturbance would be
easily and distinctly heard. One and all slept; I could hear the regular breathing of each, and my
heart rejoiced that this miserable night of anxiety was safely passed. As I knelt in my own room in a burst of thankful prayer, I knew in the
depths of my own heart the measure of my fear. I found my way out of
the house, and went down to the water by the long stairway cut in the
rock. A swim in the cool bright sea braced my nerves and made me my
old self again. As I came back to the top of the steps I could see the bright sunlight,
rising from behind me, turning the rocks across the bay to glittering
gold. And yet I felt somehow disturbed. It was all too bright; as it
sometimes is before the coming of a storm. As I paused to watch it, I
felt a soft hand on my shoulder; and, turning, found Margaret close to
me; Margaret as bright and radiant as the morning glory of the sun! It
was my own Margaret this time! My old Margaret, without alloy of any
other; and I felt that, at least, this last and fatal day was well
begun. But alas! the joy did not last. When we got back to the house from a
stroll around the cliffs, the same old routine of yesterday was
resumed: gloom and anxiety, hope, high spirits, deep depression, and
apathetic aloofness. But it was to be a day of work; and we all braced ourselves to it with
an energy which wrought its own salvation. After breakfast we all adjourned to the cave, where Mr. Trelawny went
over, point by point, the position of each item of our paraphernalia. He explained as he went on why each piece was so placed.