"Cease your gibes, and say what you have to say," said Merapi, in the
same broken voice.

He made no answer, but only looked at the tree behind which the nurse
and child had vanished.

"Oh! I know, I know," she exclaimed in tones that were like a cry. "My
child is threatened! You threaten my child because you hate me."

"Your pardon, Lady. It is true that evil threatens this royal babe,
or so I understood from Jabez, who knows so much. But it is not I that
threaten it, any more than I hate you, in whom I acknowledge a fellow of
my craft, but one greater than myself that it is my duty to obey."

"Have done! Why do you torment me?"

"Can the priests of the Moon-goddess torment Isis, Mother of Magic, with
their prayers and offerings? And can I who would make a prayer and an
offering----"

"What prayer, and what offering?"

"The prayer that you will suffer me to shelter in this house from the
many dangers that threaten me at the hands of Pharaoh and the prophets
of your people, and an offering of such help as I can give by my arts
and knowledge against blacker dangers which threaten--another."

Here once more he gazed at the trunk of the tree beyond which I heard
the infant wail.

"If I consent, what then?" she asked, hoarsely.

"Then, Lady, I will strive to protect a certain little one against a
curse which Jabez tells me threatens him and many others in whom runs
the blood of Egypt. I will strive, if I am allowed to bide here--I do
not say that I shall succeed, for as your lord has reminded me, and as
you showed me in the temple of Amon, my strength is smaller than that of
the prophets and prophetesses of Israel."

"And if I refuse?"

"Then, Lady," he answered in a voice that rang like iron, "I am sure
that one whom you love--as mothers love--will shortly be rocked in the
arms of the god whom we name Osiris."

"_Stay_," she cried and, turning, fled away.

"Why, Ana, she is gone," he said, "and that before I could bargain
for my reward. Well, this I must find in your company. How strange are
women, Ana! Here you have one of the greatest of her sex, as you learned
in the temple of Amon. And yet she opens beneath the sun of hope and
shrivels beneath the shadow of fear, like the touched leaves of that
tender plant which grows upon the banks of the river; she who, with her
eyes set on the mystery that is beyond, whereof she hears the whispering
winds, should tread both earthly hope and fear beneath her feet,