e time of kings
is not their own. Moreover Bes was Bes and an Ethiopian and I was I and
an Egyptian, and therefore notwithstanding our love and brotherhood, we
could never be like men of the same blood and country.

I grew weary of Ethiopia with its useless gold and damp eternal green
and heat, and longed for the sand and the keen desert air. Bes noted it
and offered me wives, but I shrank from these black women however buxom
and kindly, and wished for no offspring of their race whom afterwards I
could never leave. To Egypt I had sworn not to return unless one voice
called me and it remained silent. What then was I to do, being no longer
content to discipline and command an army that I might not lead into
battle?

At length I made up my mind. By nature I was a hunter as much as a
soldier; I would beg from Bes a band of brave men whom I knew, lovers
of adventure who sought new things, and with them strike down south,
following the path of the elephants to wherever the gods might lead us.
Doubtless in the end it would be to death, but what matter when there is
nothing for which one cares to live?

While I was brooding over these plans Karema read my mind, perhaps
because it was her own, perhaps by help of her strange arts, which I do
not know. At least one day when I was sitting alone looking at the city
beneath from one of the palace window-places, she came to me looking
very beautiful and very mystic in the white robes she always loved to
wear, and said,

"My lord Shabaka, you tire of this land of honey and sweetness and soft
airs and flowers and gold and crystal and black people who grin and
chatter and are not pleasant to be near, is it not so?"

"Yes, Queen," I answered.

"Do not call me queen, my lord Shabaka, for I weary of that name, as we
both do of the rest. Call me Karema the Arab, or Karema the Cup, which
you will, but by the name of Thoth, god of learning, do _not_ call me
queen."

"Karema then," I said. "Well, how do you know that I tire of all this,
Karema?"

"How could you do otherwise who are not a barbarian and who have Egypt
in your heart, and Egypt's fate and----" here she looked me straight in
the eye's, "Egypt's Lady. Besides, I measure you by myself."

"You at least should be happy, Karema, who are great and rich and
beloved, and the wife of a King who is one of the best of men, and the
mother of children."

"Yes, Shabaka, I should be but I am not, for who can live on sweetmeats
only,