ink that is wisest, Master; at any rate the holy Tanofir thinks
it wisest, and he is the voice of Fate. Oh! why do we trouble who after
all, every one of us, are nothing but pieces upon the board of Fate."

Then he turned and left me and I entered the house where I found my
mother sitting, still in her festal robes, like one who waits. She
looked at my face, then asked what troubled me. I sat down on a stool at
her feet and told her everything.

"Much as I thought," she said when I had finished. "These over-learned
women are strange fish to catch and hold, and too much soul is like too
much sail upon a boat when the desert wind begins to blow across the
Nile. Well, do not let us blame her or Bes, or Peroa who is already
anxious for his dynasty and would rather that Amada were a priestess
than your wife, or even the goddess Isis, who no doubt is anxious for
her votaries. Let us rather blame the Power that is behind the veil, or
to it bow our heads, seeing that we know nothing of the end for which it
works. So Egypt shuts her doors on you, my Son, and whither away? Not
to the East again, I trust, for there you would soon grow shorter by a
head."

"I go to Ethiopia, my Mother, where it seems that Bes is a great man and
can shelter me."

"So we go to Ethiopia, do we? Well, it is a long journey for an old
woman, but I weary of Memphis where I have lived for so many years and
doubtless the sands of the south make good burial grounds."

"We!" I exclaimed. "_We?_"

"Surely, my Son, since in losing a wife you have again found a mother
and until I die we part no more."

When I heard this my eyes filled with tears. My conscience smote me also
because of late, and indeed for years past, I had thought so much of
Amada and so little of my mother. And now it was Amada who had cast me
out, unjustly, without waiting to learn the truth, because at the worst
I, who worshipped her, had saved myself from death in slow torment by
speaking her name, while my mother, forgetting all, took me to her bosom
again as she had done when I was a babe. I knew not what to say,
but remembering the pearls, I drew them out and placed them round my
mother's neck.

She looked at the wonderful things and smiled, then said,

"Such gems as these become white locks and withered breasts but ill.
Yet, my Son, I will keep them for you till you find a wife, if not
Amada, then another."

"If not Amada, I shall never find a wife," I said bitterly, whereat