e added in a low voice, "whenever you watch the
hoops flying, you too must remember this hour."

"I shall never forget it," answered he with a smile, and then, turning
to his future sister-in-law, he called out cheerfully, "Be of good
courage, Nitetis, you will be happier than you fancy with us. We
Asiatics know how to honor beauty; and prove it by taking many wives."

Nitetis sighed, and the queen Ladice exclaimed, "On the contrary,
that very fact proves that you understand but poorly how to appreciate
woman's nature! You can have no idea, Bartja, what a woman feels on
finding that her husband--the man who to her is more than life itself,
and to whom she would gladly and without reserve give up all that
she treasures as most sacred--looks down on her with the same kind
of admiration that he bestows on a pretty toy, a noble steed, or a
well-wrought wine-bowl. But it is yet a thousand-fold more painful to
feel that the love which every woman has a right to possess for herself
alone, must be shared with a hundred others!"

"There speaks the jealous wife!" exclaimed Amasis. "Would you not fancy
that I had often given her occasion to doubt my faithfulness?"

"No, no, my husband," answered Ladice, "in this point the Egyptian men
surpass other nations, that they remain content with that which they
have once loved; indeed I venture to assert that an Egyptian wife is the
happiest of women.

[According to Diodorus (I. 27) the queen of Egypt held a higher
position than the king himself. The monuments and lists of names
certainly prove that women could rule with sovereign power. The
husband of the heiress to the throne became king. They had their
own revenues (Diodorus I. 52) and when a princess, after death, was
admitted among the goddesses, she received her own priestesses.
(Edict of Canopus.) During the reigns of the Ptolemies many coins
were stamped with the queen's image and cities were named for them.
We notice also that sons, in speaking of their descent, more
frequently reckon it from the mother's than the father's side, that
a married woman is constantly alluded to as the "mistress" or "lady"
of the house, that according to many a Greek Papyrus they had entire
disposal of all their property, no matter in what it consisted, in
short that the weaker sex seems to have enjoyed equal influence with
the stronger.]

Even the Greeks, who in so many things may serve as patterns to