She would know and remember all that was going
on, and had gone on around her; but her coming back to her old self had
to me something the sensation of a new person coming into the room. Up
to the time of leaving London I had been content whenever she was
present. I had over me that delicious sense of security which comes
with the consciousness that love is mutual. But now doubt had taken
its place. I never knew whether the personality present was my
Margaret—the old Margaret whom I had loved at the first glance—or the
other new Margaret, whom I hardly understood, and whose intellectual
aloofness made an impalpable barrier between us. Sometimes she would
become, as it were, awake all at once. At such times, though she would
say to me sweet and pleasant things which she had often said before,
she would seem most unlike herself. It was almost as if she was
speaking parrot-like or at dictation of one who could read words or
acts, but not thoughts. After one or two experiences of this kind, my
own doubting began to make a barrier; for I could not speak with the
ease and freedom which were usual to me. And so hour by hour we
drifted apart. Were it not for the few odd moments when the old
Margaret was back with me full of her charm I do not know what would
have happened. As it was, each such moment gave me a fresh start and
kept my love from changing. I would have given the world for a confidant; but this was impossible. How could I speak a doubt of Margaret to anyone, even her father! How
could I speak a doubt to Margaret, when Margaret herself was the theme! I could only endure—and hope. And of the two the endurance was the
lesser pain. I think that Margaret must have at times felt that there was some cloud
between us, for towards the end of the first day she began to shun me a
little; or perhaps it was that she had become more diffident that usual
about me. Hitherto she had sought every opportunity of being with me,
just as I had tried to be with her; so that now any avoidance, one of
the other, made a new pain to us both. On this day the household seemed very still. Each one of us was about
his own work, or occupied with his own thoughts. We only met at meal
times; and then, though we talked, all seemed more or less preoccupied. There was not in the house even the stir of the routine of service. The precaution of Mr. Trelawny in having three rooms prepared for each
of us had rendered servants unnecessary. The dining-room was solidly
prepared with cooked provisions for several days. Towards evening I
went out by myself for a stroll. I had looked for Margaret to ask her
to come with me; but when I found her, she was in one of her apathetic
moods, and the charm of her presence seemed lost to me. Angry with
myself, but unable to quell my own spirit of discontent, I went out
alone over the rocky headland. On the cliff, with the wide expanse of wonderful sea before me, and no
sound but the dash of waves below and the harsh screams of the seagulls
above, my thoughts ran free. Do what I would, they returned
continuously to one subject, the solving of the doubt that was upon me. Here in the solitude, amid the wide circle of Nature’s force and
strife, my mind began to work truly. Unconsciously I found myself
asking a question which I would not allow myself to answer. At last
the persistence of a mind working truly prevailed; I found myself face
to face with my doubt. The habit of my life began to assert itself,
and I analysed the evidence before me. It was so startling that I had to force myself into obedience to
logical effort. My starting-place was this:  Margaret was changed—in
what way, and by what means? Was it her character, or her mind, or her
nature? for her physical appearance remained the same. I began to
group all that I had ever heard of her, beginning at her birth. It was strange at the very first. She had been, according to Corbeck’s
statement, born of a dead mother during the time that her father and
his friend were in a trance in the tomb at Aswan. That trance was
presumably effected by a woman; a woman mummied, yet preserving as we
had every reason to believe from after experience, an astral body
subject to a free will and an active intelligence. With that astral
body, space ceased to exist. The vast distance between London and
Aswan became as naught; and whatever power of necromancy the Sorceress
had might have been exercised over the dead mother, and possibly the
dead child. The dead child! Was it possible that the child was dead and was made
alive again? Whence then came the animating spirit—the soul? Logic
was pointing the way to me now with a vengeance! If the Egyptian belief was true for Egyptians, then the “Ka” of the
dead Queen and her “Khu” could animate what she might choose. In such
case Margaret would not be an individual at all, but simply a phase of
Queen Tera herself; an astral body obedient to her will! Here I revolted against logic. Every fibre of my being resented such a
conclusion. How could I believe that there was no Margaret at all; but
just an animated image, used by the Double of a woman of forty
centuries ago to its own ends...! Somehow, the outlook was brighter to
me now, despite the new doubts. At least I had Margaret! Back swung the logical pendulum again. The child then was not dead. If so, had the Sorceress had anything to do with her birth at all? It
was evident—so I took it again from Corbeck—that there was a strange
likeness between Margaret and the pictures of Queen Tera. How could
this be? It could not be any birth-mark reproducing what had been in
the mother’s mind; for Mrs. Trelawny had never seen the pictures. Nay,
even her father had not seen them till he had found his way into the
tomb only a few days before her birth. This phase I could not get rid
of so easily as the last; the fibres of my being remained quiet. There
remained to me the horror of doubt. And even then, so strange is the
mind of man, Doubt itself took a concrete image; a vast and
impenetrable gloom, through which flickered irregularly and
spasmodically tiny points of evanescent light, which seemed to quicken
the darkness into a positive existence. The remaining possibility of relations between Margaret and the mummied
Queen was, that in some occult way the Sorceress had power to change
places with the other. This view of things could not be so lightly
thrown aside. There were too many suspicious circumstances to warrant
this, now that my attention was fixed on it and my intelligence
recognised the possibility. Hereupon there began to come into my mind
all the strange incomprehensible matters which had whirled through our
lives in the last few days. At first they all crowded in upon me in a
jumbled mass; but again the habit of mind of my working life prevailed,
and they took order. I found it now easier to control myself; for
there was something to grasp, some work to be done; though it was of a
sorry kind, for it was or might be antagonistic to Margaret.