d it. Go, Ta-user, the hour is late. Have
thy woman stir a potion for thee, and sleep. I would to mine own
dreams. They yield me what the day denies."

"Stay, Rameses," she urged, catching at his robes once more. "I would
have thee know something. But am I to tell thee in words what I would
have thee know? Surely I have not let slip a single chance to show
thee by token. Art thou stubborn or blind, that thou dost not pity me
and spare me the avowal?"

Rameses looked down at her upturned face without a softening line on
his pallid countenance.

"Ta-user," he said deliberately, "had I been mummied and entombed I
should have known thine intent. I marvel that thou couldst think I had
not seen. Now, hast thou not guessed my mind by this? Have I not been
sufficiently explicit? Must I, too, lay bare my heart in words?"

She did not speak for a moment. Then she said eagerly:

"Let not thy jealousy trouble thee concerning Seti--he is naught to
me--I love him not--a boy, no more."

"Seti!" he exclaimed contemptuously. "I have no feeling against Seti
save for his unfealty to the little child who loves him,--whose heart
thou hast most deliberately broken."

"Not so," she declared vehemently. "I can not help the boy's
attachment to me. She is a child, as thou hast said, and is easily
comforted. Not so with maturer hearts like mine."

She put her arms about his neck, and flinging her head back, gazed at
him with a heavy eye.

"O, wilt thou put me aside for Masanath? What is her little dark
beauty compared to mine? How can she, who is not even a stately
subject, be a stately queen? Wilt thou set the crown upon her unregal
head, invest her with the royal robes, and yield thy homage to a scowl
and a bitter word? And me, in whom there is no drop of unroyal blood,
in whom there is all the passion of the southlands and all the fidelity
of the north, thou wilt humiliate. The gods made me for thee--schooled
me for thy needs and shifted the nation's history so that thou shouldst
have need of me. Look upon me, Rameses. Why wilt thou thrust me
aside?"

She was not dealing with Seti, or Siptah, or any other whom she had
bewitched. There was no spell in the topaz eyes for Rameses. If her
sorcery affected him at all, it won no more than a cursory interest in
her next move.

"The night is too short to recount my reasons," he replied calmly, as
he put her arms away. "But I might point out the snarling cur, Si