these days,
perhaps only persecution, but I would reap my reward of honor, though it
be a thousand years in coming."

"Thou hast a grudge against the conventional forms and the rules of the
ritual?" Hotep asked, after a thoughtful silence.

"I have a distaste for the horrors it compels and am ignorant of their
use," Kenkenes answered stubbornly.

"Kenkenes," the scribe began, "Law is a most inexorable thing. It is the
governor of the Infinite. It is a tyrant, which, good or bad, can demand
and enforce obedience to its fiats. It is a capricious thing and it
drags its vassal--the whole created world--after it in its mutations, or
stamps the rebel into the dust while the time-serving obedient ones
applaud. So thou hast set up resistance against a thing greater than
gods and men and I can not see thee undone. I love thee, but I should be
an untrue friend did I abet thee in thy lawlessness. Submit gracefully
and thy cause shall have an audience with Law some day--if it have merit."

The young sculptor's face was passive, but his eyes were fixed sadly on
the remote stars strewn above him. He felt inexpressibly solitary. His
zest in his convictions did not flag, but it seemed that the whole world
and the heavens had receded and left him alone with them.

Again Hotep spoke.

"There is more court gossip," he began cheerily, as if no word had been
said that could depress the tone of the conversation.

Kenkenes accepted the new subject gladly.

"Out with it," he said. "Within the four walls of my world I hear naught
but the clink of mallet and falling stone."

"The breach between Meneptah and Amon-meses, his mutinous brother, may be
healed by a wedding."

"So?"

"Of a surety--nay, and not of a surety, either, but mayhap. A match
between the niece of Amon-meses, the Princess Ta-user, and the heir,
Rameses."

Kenkenes sat up again in his earnestness. "Nay," he exclaimed. "Never!"

"Wherefore, I pray thee?" Hotep asked with a deprecating smile.

"There is no mating between the lion and the eagle; the stag and the asp!
They could not love."

"Thou dreamy idealist!" Hotep laughed. "The half of great marriages are
moves of strategy, attended more by Set[1] than Athor.[2] Ta-user is mad
for the crown, Rameses for undisputed power. Each has one of these two
desirable things to give the other."

"And how shall they appease Athor?" Kenkenes demanded warmly. "Ta-user
loves Siptah, the son of Amon-meses, an