of love, till at length I drew near to her and threw my arms
about her."

"And then----"

"And then, Kaku, she was gone, and where her sweet face should have been
I saw the yellow, mummied head of Pharaoh, he who is with Osiris, that
seemed to grin at me. I opened my arms again, and lo! there she sat,
laughing and shaking perfume from her hair, asking me, too, what ailed
me that I turned so white, and if such were the way of husbands?

"Well, that was nigh a month ago, and as it began, so it has gone on. I
seek my wife, and I find the mummied head of Pharaoh, and all the while
she mocks me. Nor may I see the others any more, for she has caused them
to be hunted hence, even those who have dwelt with me for years, saying
that she must rule alone."

"Is that all?" asked Kaku.

"No, indeed, for as she torments me, so she torments every other man who
comes near to her. She nets them with smiles, she bewitches them with
her eyes till they go mad for love of her, and then, still smiling, she
sends them about their business. Already two of them who were leaders in
the great plot have died by their own hands, and another is mad, while
the rest have become my secret but my bitter foes, because they love my
Queen and think that I stand between her and them."

"Is that all?" asked Kaku again.

"No, not all, for my power is taken from me. I who was great, after
Pharaoh the greatest in all the land, now am but a slave. From morning
to night I must work at tasks I hate; I must build temples to Amen, I
must dig canals, I must truckle to the common herd, and redress their
grievances and remit their taxes. More, I must chastise the Bedouin who
have ever been my friends, and--next month undertake a war against that
King of Khita, with whom I made a secret treaty, and whose daughter that
I married has been sent back to him because I loved her."

"And then?" asked Kaku.

"Oh! then when the Khita have been destroyed and made subject to Egypt,
then her Majesty purposes to return in state to Thebes 'to attend to the
fashioning of my sepulchre' since, so she says, this is a matter that
will not bear delay. Indeed, already she makes drawings for it, horrible
and mystic drawings that I cannot understand, and brings them to me to
see. Moreover, Friend, know this, out of it opens another smaller tomb
for _you_. Indeed, but this morning she sent an expedition to the desert
quarries to bring thence three blocks of stone, one for my sarcoph