l; ever have I loved thee and tended thee. Come back, I pray--come
back."

But her son heard not and heeded not, pressing on toward the Gates of
the Heart's Desire.

"Oh, my husband, my husband!" cried another, young, of gentle birth, and
fair, who bare a babe on her left arm and with the right clutched her
lord's broidered robe. "Oh, my husband, have I not loved thee and been
kind to thee, and wilt thou still go up to look upon the deadly glory
of the Hathor? They say she wears the beauty of the Dead. Lovest thou
me not better than her who died five years agone, Merisa the daughter of
Rois, though thou didst love her first? See, here is thy babe, thy babe,
but one week born. Even from my bed of pain have I risen and followed
after thee down these weary roads, and I am like to lose my life for it.
Here is thy babe, let it plead with thee. Let me die if so it must be,
but go not thou up to thy death. It is no Goddess whom thou wilt see,
but an evil spirit loosed from the under-world, and that shall be thy
doom. Oh, if I please thee not, take thou another wife and I will make
her welcome, only go not up to thy death!"

But the man fixed his eyes upon the pylon tops, heeding her not, and at
length she sank upon the road, and there with the babe would have been
crushed by the chariots, had not the Wanderer borne her to one side of
the way.

Now, of all sights this was the most dreadful, for on every side rose
the prayers and lamentations of women, and still the multitude of men
pressed on unheeding.

"Now thou seest the power of Love, and how if a woman be but beautiful
enough she may drag all men to ruin," said Rei the Priest.

"Yes," said the Wanderer; "a strange sight, truly. Much blood hath this
Hathor of thine upon her hands."

"And yet thou wilt give her thine, Wanderer."

"That I am not minded to do," he answered; "yet I will look upon her
face, so speak no more of it."

Now they were come to the space before the bronze gates of the pylon of
the outer court, and there the multitude gathered to the number of many
hundreds. Presently, as they watched, a priest came to the gates,
that same priest who had shown the Wanderer the bodies in the baths of
bronze. He looked through the bars and cried aloud:

"Whoso would enter into the court and look upon the Holy Hathor let him
draw nigh. Know ye this, all men, the Hathor is to him who can win her.
But if he pass not, then shall he die and be buried within the tem