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Now that her eyes were open, Mut resolved to behave like a reasonable human being and take a step worthy to stand before reason’s throne. Its clear and unequivocal intent was to put Joseph out of her sight. She would lay the case for his departure before Petepre, her husband, with all the powers she had at command.

She had spent the next day after her dream alone, withdrawn from her sister wives and receiving no visits. She had sat beside the basin in the court and watched the darting fish; concentrating, as we say of a person whose gaze passes over the objects in its path and fixes itself on space. But all at once in the midst of this staring her eyes widened in alarm, opened wider and wider as though with horror while still staring at nothing; she opened her mouth and drew in a gasping breath. Then the eyes retracted; the corners of her mouth deepened and the lips relaxed in an unconscious smile beneath the dreaming gaze. For a whole minute she knew not that she smiled; with a start she pressed her hand upon those errant lips, the thumb on one cheek, the four fingers on the other. “Ye gods!” she murmured. Then it began anew: the dreamy stare, the gasp, the unconscious smiling, and the shocked recall—until at last the conclusion came: she must make an end to it all.

Toward sunset she inquired and learned that Petepre was in the house, and summoned her maids to dress her, that she might visit him.

Petepre was in his western hall, which looked out on the orchard and the little summerhouse on the mound. The sunset light, falling through the gay outer columns, began to fill the room and enrich the pale colours on the walls, the floor, and the ceiling, where pictures flung with careless ease by an artist hand adorned the stucco facing: a swamp with hovering birds; calves jumping; ponds with ducks; a herd of bulls being driven across a ford while a crocodile leered at them out of the water. The rear wall, between the doors which led into the dining-room, displayed pictures of the master of the house in his habit as he lived, and showed him returning home attended by assiduous servants. The doors were framed in glazed tiles covered with picture-writing in blue, red, and green on a dun-coloured background: sayings from ancient authors and lines from hymns to the gods. Along the wall between the doors ran a sort of raised ledge with a back, both of clay, covered with white stucco and with coloured picture-writing on the front. This ledge or bench served as a stand for works of art, the presents in which Petepre’s house abounded. But you could also sit on it; and there now he sat, the man full of honours, in the middle, on a cushion, his feet together on a footstool, while on both sides of him extended in a row the most lovely objects: animals, images of the gods, royal sphinxes, all made of gold, malachite, and ivory, and behind him the falcons, owls, ducks, wavy lines, and other symbols of the inscriptions. He had made himself comfortable by taking off all his clothes down to the knee-length skirt of strong white linen with a wide starched draw-string. His upper garment, and his staff with his sandals tied to it, lay on a lion-footed chair near one of the doors. Yet there was no relaxation in his posture; he sat up perfectly straight, his little hands stretched out in his lap. They looked tiny compared with the massiveness of his body, as did his finely shaped, severely erect head with its aristocratically hooked nose and well-cut mouth. He sat there, a well-composed seated statue of a fat yet dignified man. His powerful legs were like straight columns, his arms like those of a fat woman; his fat-upholstered chest was thrust out. His mild long-lashed brown eyes looked straight before him through the hall into the red evening light. In all his fatness he had no belly, being narrow round the hips. His navel was striking: very large and horizontal, so that it looked like a mouth.

He had sat there a long time thus motionless, in an idleness ennobled by the man’s natural dignity. In the tomb which awaited him a life-size counterfeit would stand in a false door, in darkness, in the same immovable calm which he now displayed in life, and gaze out of brown glass eyes at paintings on the wall, where his household surroundings were depicted, for purposes of magic, that he might have them with him to all eternity. This statue would be the same precisely as he was—he anticipated the identity with it as he sat here now and made himself eternal. At his back and on the ledge close to his feet the picture-writings, red, blue, and green, expressed their meaning; on either side of him extended Pharaoh’s gifts in long rows; most consonant with the Egyptian sense of form were the painted columns between which he gazed into the evening glow. To be surrounded by possessions favours immobility. One’s possessions shall endure, and oneself endure in their midst, one’s limbs composed to quiet. For others movement: for those who face the world, who sow, who give out and, giving, expend themselves in their seed. But not for one constituted and made like Petepre, in the inviolability of his being. Composed, symmetrical, he sat there, without access to the world, inaccessible to the death of begetting; eternal, a god in his chapel.

A black shadow glided between the pillars, sidewise to the direction of his eyes, an outline against the red glow. It entered crouching and so remained, silent, its brow between its hands, upon the floor. He slowly turned his eyeballs toward it. It was one of Mut’s naked Moorish handmaids, animal-like. He blinked and roused himself. Then he raised one hand, from the wrist only, and commanded:

“Speak!”

She jerked her forehead up from the floor, rolled her eyes, and answered in a husky, barbaric voice:

“The mistress is at hand and would approach the master.”

He bethought himself again. Then he replied:

“It is granted.”

The little animal disappeared backwards over the threshold. Petepre sat with lifted brows. After a few moments Mut appeared on the spot where the slave had crouched. With her elbows at her sides she extended toward him both palms like an offerant. He saw that she was heavily clad, in a long, full, pleated mantle above her narrow ankle-length under-garment. Her shadowy cheeks were framed in a dark-blue head-cloth like a wig which fell on shoulders and neck and was confined by an embroidered band. On top of it stood a cone of ointment, with a hole through which the stem of a lotus was drawn, curving down parallel with the line of the head so that the blossom swayed above her brow. The stones in her necklace and arm-bands glittered darkly.

Petepre lifted his small hands likewise in greeting and carried the back of one of them to his mouth to kiss.

“Flower of the lands!” he said in a tone of surprise. “Lovely of face, having a place in the house of Amun! Pure-handed loveliness, alone among those that bear the sistrum, and with voice of beauty when she sings!” He continued on a note of joyous surprise as he rapidly repeated the stilted phrases. “You that fill the house with beauty, charming one to whom all pay homage, familiar of the queen—you can read my heart, since you fulfil its every wish ere it be spoken, and fulfil them all by your coming.—Here is a cushion,” he went on in an ordinary tone, as he drew one from behind his back and placed it on the lower ledge at his feet. “Would the gods,” he resumed the courtly key, “you had come with a plea, that the greater it were, with the more joy could I grant it.”

He had ground for curiosity. For her visit was quite out of the usual order and tactful routine and therefore disturbed him. He divined some special reason for it and felt a certain uneasy joy. But for the moment she uttered only fulsome phrases.

“What wish, as your sister, could I still cherish, my master and friend?” she said in her soft voice, a sonorous alto which betrayed cultivation. “For I have breath only through you, yet, thanks to your greatness, all is vouchsafed me. That I have a place in the temple is due to your eminence among the great of the land. That I am called friend to the queen, is solely because you are Pharaoh’s friend and gilded with the favour of the sun since your rising. Without you I were dark. As yours I have a fullness of light.”

“It were useless to gainsay you, if such is your belief,” he said with a smile. “At least let us take care that your fullness of light be not darkened where we stand.” He clapped his hands. “Make light!” he ordered the slave who appeared from the dining-room.

Eni demurred. “Not yet, my husband,” said she. “It is hardly dusk. You were sitting to enjoy the beautiful twilight hour; I have no wish to regret that I disturbed you.”

“Nay, I insist,” he answered her. “Receive it as evidence of that for which they blame me: that my will is like black granite from the quarries of the Retenu. I cannot change it, I am too old to alter. For to do that would be to show myself ungrateful to my dearest and best, who has guessed the secretest wish of my heart with this wish, and shall I receive her in darkness and gloom? Is it not a feast-day when you come, and shall I leave the feast unillumined? All four lights!” he said to the two servants bearing torches, with which they hastened to light the candelabra standing on columns in the four corners of the hall. “Let them burn up bright!”

“As you will,” said she with an admiring, submissive shrug. “Truly I know the firmness of your resolution, and may the blame rest on those who strike against it! Women cannot but esteem inflexibility in a man. Shall I say why?”

“I would gladly hear.”

“Because only that can give worth to surrender and make of it something of which we may be proud when we receive it.”

“Most charming,” said he, and blinked. Partly because of the brightness, for the hall now lay in the light of twenty lamp-wicks stuck in blazing wax, that sent up thick glaring flames till the hall became a sea of mingled milk and blood from the white light and the sunset glow. But partly too he blinked reflectively at the meaning her words might bear. Obviously she had a request, he thought, and no small one, otherwise she would not so carefully lead up to it. “It is not her way, for she knows full well my honourable peculiarities and how much it means to me to be left in peace and take nothing upon myself. And she is usually too proud to ask anything; her pride and my convenience thus coincide. Yet it would be good, and elevate my spirits, to do her a favour and show my power. I am curious, and concerned, to hear what she would have. The best would be if it seemed to her great yet was not so for me, so that I may do her pleasure without too great cost to my comfort. Lo, there is a conflict in my breast: it rises from my justified self-esteem, that flows from my peculiar and consecrated state and makes me find it hateful when I am approached too closely and my rest disturbed; and on the other hand from my desire to show myself loving and strong to this woman. She is lovely in her heavy robe, which she wears in my presence for the same reason that made me command the lights to be brought—lovely with her eyes like precious stones and her shadowy cheeks. I love her, in so far as my justified self-esteem permits; but here is the actual contradiction, for I hate her too, I always hate her, because of the claim which of course she does not make upon me but which is taken for granted in a marriage. Yet I do not like to hate her, rather I would that I could love her without hate. Were she to give me good occasion to show myself strong and loving, the hatred might be taken from my love and I might be happy. Therefore am I so curious to know what she would have, if also a little disturbed on account of my comfort.”

Such were Petepre’s thoughts as he blinked, while the slaves finished lighting the lamps and with silent haste withdrew, the torches held in their crossed arms.

“You permit me to sit beside you?” he heard Eni ask with a little laugh; starting from his thoughts, he bent once more to arrange the cushion as he expressed his pleasure. She sat down at his feet on the inscribed ledge.

“Truly,” she said, “it happens too seldom that we are together like this for an hour, enjoying each other’s presence without other purpose than to talk—of no matter what; for with an object in view we must talk, whereas without one talk is the pleasanter for being superfluous. Do you not agree?”

He nodded assent, sitting with his big feminine-looking arms stretched out along the back-rest of the ledge. He thought: “Seldom happens? It never happens; for we members of this noble and exalted family, parents and children, lead our lives apart, each in his own place; we avoid each other out of delicacy save when we break bread. That it happens today must have a reason, and I am full of curiosity and misgiving. Am I wrong? Is she here simply to see me, to be with me at this hour because her nature demands it? I do not know what to wish. For I could wish that she should have a need provided it be not too inconvenient to me; yet that she came for the sake of my presence solely I could wish even more—almost.” He was thinking this as he said:

“I quite agree. It is a poor and narrow mind that uses speech merely as a tool for practical understandings. Whereas the rich and noble require beauty and superfluity in everything, speech as well. For beauty and superfluity are the same thing. How strange it is about words, and the dignity of them: that they can lift themselves out of their bald sufficience to the whole height of their significance! The word ‘superfluous,’ for instance, often carries with it a contemptuous meaning; yet it can rise to a royal height, beyond the reach of contempt and in itself actually signify the name and nature of beauty. I often think of the mystery of words when I sit alone, and amuse my mind with such charming and idle occupation.”

“Thanks to my lord that he lets me share his thought,” answered she. “Your mind is clear, like the lamps you have had lighted for our meeting. If you were not Pharaoh’s chamberlain, you might well be one of the learned scribes of the god, who walk in the temple courts and ponder words of wisdom.”

“Very likely,” said he. “For a man might be many other things than precisely that which it is his lot to be or to represent. He may often marvel at the absurd play-acting he has to do in his allotted rôle; he feels stifled in the mask life has put on him, as the priests may at times feel stifled in the mask of the god. Do you agree?”

“Quite.”

“Yet perhaps not quite,” he said insinuatingly. “Probably women have less understanding of such a feeling. For the Great Mother has granted them a more general sense in respect of their being more women and image of the Mother, and less this or that individual woman. For instance as though you were less bound to be Mut-em-enet than I am to be Petepre because I am conditioned by the sterner father-spirit. Do you agree?”

“It is so very bright in this hall,” said she, with her head bowed, “from the flames that blaze by virtue of your masculine will. Such thoughts, it seems to me, are better pursued by softer light; it would be easier for me in the twilight to consider this matter of being more a woman and image of the Mother than just plain Mut-em-enet.”

“Pardon me,” he hastened to reply; “it was untactful of me not to adapt our delightfully idle conversation to the light which befits this joyous hour. I will give it a turn more suited to the festal illumination I have seen fit to make. Nothing could be easier. I will pass over the things of the mind and speak of matters of the tangible daylight world. But before I make that easy transition let me have my pleasure in the pretty mystery which consists in the fact that the world of tangible things is also the intelligible world. For what one can actually grasp with the hand is intelligible to the mind of women, children, and the common folk; whereas the intangible is intelligible only to the sterner mind of the male. The word ‘comprehend’ is figurative, the word ‘tangible’ is literal—though the latter may easily become figurative as well: we even say of an easily comprehensible thing that we can actually grasp it with our senses.”

“Your observations and idle thoughts are most charming, my husband,” said she, “and I cannot express the refreshment this connubial conversation gives me. Do not think I am in haste to pass over from the intangible things to the tangible. On the contrary, I would gladly linger with you in the realm of your idle thoughts, and counter them in the measure of my powers as a woman or a child. I had no meaning in my words save that a less glaring light suits better for the exchange of intimate thoughts.”

He did not answer at once, being annoyed. But presently, in a chiding tone and shaking his head:

“The mistress of the house keeps coming back to the point in which things went not according to her will but to that of the stronger. That is not quite fine, the less so that it is the way of women to cling to and dissect such occasions. Permit me the suggestion that in this one respect my Eni should try to be more Mut the exceptional woman and less the ordinary one.”

“I hear and repent,” she murmured.

“If we were bent on mutual reproach,” he continued, giving his irritation further vent, “how easily might I express my regret that you come to me at this hour, my friend, clad in so thick a mantle; for surely it is the joy and desire of your friend to follow the lines of your swanlike form through the kind transparency of a linen garment.”

“Woe is me indeed!” she said, and drooped her head with a blush. “It would be better for me to die rather than learn that I have come before my lord in an unpleasing garb. I swear that I thought to give you special pleasure in this dress. For it is more costly and full of art than most of mine. My sewing-woman Heti worked with sleepless industry to make it and I shared her care that I might find favour in your eyes. But a care shared is not a care halved.”

“No matter, my dear,” he answered. “Let it pass. I did not say that I wished to complain, only that I could do it if you so desired. But I will not take for granted that you do. Let us go on with our idle conversation, as though the question of blame had never crept into it, like a false note. For now I will pass over to the things of the tangible world and say how I rejoice that my task in life is stamped with the seal of superfluity and not of need. I used the word ‘royal’ to characterize the superfluous; and indeed it is in its right place at court and in the palace Merimat; as ornament, as form for form’s sake, as the elegantly turned phrase with which one greets the god. All these are the affair of the courtier; so that one may say in a way that the mask is less stifling than to him who is hemmed in by the objective fact and stands closer to the feminine because it is granted him to be less individual. It is true, I am not among those whom Pharaoh summons for advice about boring a well on the road through the desert to the sea, or the erection of a monument, or how many men it takes to wash a load of gold-dust out of the mines of the wretched Kush; and it may be that it detracts from my satisfaction and I am angry with the man Hor-em-heb, who commands the household troops and holds the head office among the executioners, almost without asking my advice, although I bear the title of the office. But always I have overcome these attacks of annoyance. For after all I am different from Hor-em-heb, as the possessor of the title is different from the necessary but unimportant official who actually holds the fan over Pharaoh when he drives out. People like that are beneath me. For mine it is to stand before Pharaoh at his levee with the other tide-bearers and dignitaries of the court and repeat the hymn of salutation to the majesty of this god: ‘Thou art like Re,’ with our adoring voices; and to expend myself in utterly ornamental flourishes such as: ‘A scale is thy tongue, O Neb-mat-Re, and thy lips are more just than the little tongue on the scale of Thoth’; or extravagant protestations like: ‘Speakest thou to the ocean and sayest: “Rise up to the mountain!” lo, the waters come up, even as thou hast spoken.’ So must I speak, in beautiful, objectless form, far from the compulsions of ordinary life. For pure form, adornment without purpose, is my honour and my task, as it is the task of royalty to be royal. And all this is an aid to my self-esteem.”

“Splendid and fitting it is too,” she answered, “if also the truth be honoured and receive support, as is doubtless the case in your words, my husband. Yet it seems to me that the beautiful superfluities of the court and the extravagances at the levee serve to clothe with honour and dread the material cares of the god, such as wells and buildings and gold-mines, for the sake of their importance to the land; and that concern for these things is the most royal thing about royalty.”

Petepre again closed his lips and refrained from any answer, playing with the draw-string of his skirt.

“I should be untruthful,” he said at last with a little sigh, “were I to say that your share in our pleasant conversation is conducted with great tact. I made a skilful transition to the more worldly and material things of life, bringing the subject round to Pharaoh and the court. I expected you to return the ball by asking me some question, such as for instance whose ear-lobe Pharaoh tweaked in token of his favour when we went out of the hall of the canopy after the levee; but instead you turned aside into observations about such irritating matters as mines and desert wells, about which, truly, my love, you must certainly understand even less than I.”

“You are right,” she replied, shaking her head over her blunder. “Forgive me. My eagerness to know whose ear-lobe Pharaoh tweaked today was only too great. I dissembled it by small talk. Pray understand me: I thought to put off the question, feeling that a slow leading up to the important subject is the finest and most important feature of elegant conversation. Only the clumsy blunder in their approach by precipitation, betraying at once the whole content of their minds. But now that you have permitted me the question: Was it not yourself, my husband, whom the god distinguished?”

“No,” said Petepre, “it was not I. It often has been, but not today. But your words betrayed—I know not how, yet it appeared as though you inclined to the view that Hor-em-heb, the acting captain of the guard, is greater at court and in the lands than I—”

“The gods forbid, my husband! In the name of the Hidden One!” she cried in alarm, laying her beringed hand on his knee. He looked at it as though a bird had alighted there. “I should need to be weak-minded indeed, past hope of betterment, if for a single moment—”

“Your words made it seem so,” he asseverated, with a regretful shrug, “though of course contrary to any such intent. It was almost as though you would say—what example shall I give? As though in your mind a baker of Pharaoh’s bakery, who actually bakes the bread for the god and his house and sticks his head in the oven is greater than the great overseer of the royal bakery, Pharaoh’s chief baker, whose title is prince of Menfe. Or as though I, who of course take nothing upon myself, were of less importance here in the house than Mont-kaw, my steward, or even than his youthful ‘mouth,’ the Syrian Osarsiph who oversees the workshops. Those are striking instances—”

Mut had shrunk back.

“They strike me indeed, so that I quail beneath them,” said she. “You see my confusion and in your great-heartedness will let the punishment rest at that. I see now how I have disarranged our dialogue with my proneness to delay. But gratify my curiosity, which I hoped to conceal, and quench it as one quenches blood: let me hear who it was that received the caress of favour in the throne-room today.”

“It was Nofer-rohu, chief of the anointers from the treasury of the king,” answered he.

“So it was that prince,” she said. “Did they surround him?”

“They did, according to the custom, and congratulated him,” he answered. “He is at the moment very much in the forefront of attention; it would be well that he should be seen at the entertainment we purpose giving at the next quarter of the moon. It would add to the lustre of the occasion and to that of our house.”

“Certainly,” she agreed; “you must invite him in a beautiful letter in which he will take pleasure because of the elegance of the phrases, such as: ‘Beloved of his master!’ or ‘Rewarded and distinguished by his lord’; and you must send him a present to his house besides, by special messenger. Then it would be most unlikely that Nofer-rohu would decline.”

“I think so too,” said Petepre. “And the present must be something very choice, of course. I will have various things brought before me to choose from and this evening I will write an invitation which he will really enjoy reading. My child,” he went on, “I should like this entertainment to be particularly choice, so that it will be talked of in the city and the report of it reach other distant ones. With some seventy guests, and rich in unguents, flowers, musicians, food, and wine. I have purchased a very good figure of a mummy to be carried about, a good piece, an ell and a half long—I will show it to you beforehand if you like: the case is gold, the body of ebony, with ‘Celebrate the joyful day’ written on the forehead. Have you heard of the Babylonian dancers?”

“Which dancers, my husband?”

“There is a travelling company of foreign dancers in the city. I have had presents sent to them, that they may come to my entertainment. From all that I hear, they are of exotic beauty and accompany their performance with bells and sounding tambourines. They are said to know some new and striking poses, and to have a strange fire of fury in their eyes as they dance, as well as in their caresses. I promise myself a sensation, and for our party great success from their presence.”

Eni looked down, she seemed to reflect.

“Do you intend,” she said after a pause, “to invite Beknechons, first priest of Amun, to your party?”

“Of course, naturally,” he answered. “Beknechons? It goes without saying. Why do you ask?”

“His presence seems important to you?”

“Why not? Beknechons is a great man.”

“More important than that of the Babylonian maidens?”

“What sort of comparisons are these, my love? What choice are you putting before me?”

“The two are not reconcilable, my husband. I must make it clear to you that you must choose between them. For if the Babylonian maidens dance before Amun’s high priest at your feast, it may be that the strange fire of fury in their eyes would not equal that in Beknechons’s heart and that he would rise and summon his servants and leave your house.”

“Impossible!”

“Even probable, my friend. He would not suffer the Hidden One to be affronted before his eyes.”

“By a dance?”

“By a dance danced by foreign dancers—when, after all, Egypt is full of beauty of this kind and even sends its dancers abroad.”

“So much the better may Egypt allow itself the pleasure of the novel and unknown.”

“That is not Beknechons’s view. His objection to what is foreign is very strong.”

“But I hope that it is your view.”

“My view is that of my master and friend,” said she, “for how can that go against the honour of our gods?”

“The honour of the gods, the honour of the gods,” he repeated, shrugging his shoulders. “I must confess that my mood and spirit begin to be clouded by our talk—which is quite contrary to the purpose of elegant conversation.”

“I should be alarmed,” she replied, “if that were the result of my care for your peace of mind. For how would it stand with that if Beknechons in anger called his servants and left the feast so that there would be talk of his rebuff in both the lands?”

“He would not be so petty as to feel offence at an elegant diversion nor so bold as to offer an indignity to the friend of Pharaoh.”

“He is great enough that his thoughts travel easily from small affairs to large and he would give offence to Pharaoh’s friend sooner than to Pharaoh, in the sense of a warning to the latter. Amun hates the laxity of foreign ways and the disregard of pious old custom, because it enervates the land and weakens the authority of the kingdom. That is what Amun hates, as we both know; for he wishes the fibre of moral discipline to be strong in the land, as it always has been in Kemt, and to have its children walk in the path of patriotic tradition. But you know, as well as I, that down there”—Mut pointed westward, toward the Nile and beyond it to the palace—“another sun-sense rules and is lightly favoured among Pharaoh’s wise men: the sense of On at the apex of the Delta; the mobile sense of Aton-Re, inclined to broadness and conciliation—they call it Aton, with I know not what weakening effect. Must not Beknechons be angered for Amun if his son in the body favours this laxness and permits his thinkers and seekers to weaken the marrow of the land by toying with foreign ways? He may not blame Pharaoh. But he will blame him in you, and make demonstration for Amun by raging like a leopard of Egypt when he sees the Babylonian maidens, and will spring up to summon his servants.”

“I hear you speak,” he retorted, “like the clapper-bird of Punt with tongue like a rattle, who hears and repeats what is not in its head. The marrow of the lands, and the good old ways, and the laxity of foreign ones—all that is Beknechons, those are his disagreeable and crafty words, and it upsets me to have you repeat them; for your coming gave me hope of familiar converse with yourself, not with him.”

“I only remind you, my friend,” she answered, “of his views, which you know, in order to protect you from serious unpleasantness. I say not that Beknechons’s thoughts are mine.”

“But they are,” he retorted. “I hear his voice in yours; but you do not utter his thoughts as something foreign in which you have no share, but rather you have made them yours and are of one mind with him, the shiny-pated priest, against me—and that is what I cannot bear. Do I not know that he goes in and out in our house, visiting you each quarter of the moon or even oftener? And always to my unspoken distress, for he is not my friend, I cannot bear him or his guile and bad manners. My nature and temperament demand a mild, refined, and tolerant sun-sense; thus in my heart I am for Atum-Re, the tolerant god; but especially because I belong to Pharaoh and am his courtier, for he permits the experimental thought of his wise men to dwell upon the benign and universal sun-sense of this glorious god. But you, my consort and sister before gods and men, where do you stand in these matters? Do you hold, not with me—in other words, with Pharaoh and the tendencies of the court—but rather with Amun the inflexible, the brazen-browed; do you lean to his party against me and are of one house with the chief shiny-pate of the ungracious god, not realizing how offensive it is to infringe upon my dignity or show me disloyalty?”

“You use comparisons, my lord,” said she, in a voice thin and pinched with anger, “lacking in good taste, which is strange considering the reading you do. For it is without taste, or in poor taste, to say that I am of one house with the prophet and therefore disloyal to you. That is a lame and distorted comparison. I must remind you that Pharaoh is Amun’s son, according to the teaching of the fathers and the people’s ancient belief, and therefore you would do no violence to your duty as courtier by paying heed to the sacred sun-sense of Amun, however ill-mannered you find him, and by bringing him the light sacrifice of your own and your guests’ curiosity in respect of a paltry dance, however striking. So much with respect to yourself. As for me, I am utterly and entirely Amun’s, in piety and devotion, for I am the bride of his temple and of his house of women, Hathor am I, and dance before him in the garment of the goddess, that is all my honour and my desire and further have I none, this honourable rank is my life’s sole content. And you would quarrel with me because I keep faith with the lord my god and unearthly spouse, and make comparisons against me that cry to heaven with their falseness.” And she lifted up a fold of her mantle and, bending over, shrouded her face with it.

The captain of the guard was more than distressed. He shuddered, he even felt cold all over; for it seemed to him that intimate matters, always most tactfully passed over in silence, threatened to come to speech in the most shocking and destructive way. He leaned, with his arms spread out along the back of his seat, still farther away from her; and sat numbly, looking down, indignant, guilty, and bewildered, to where she wept. “What is this?” he thought. “It is all quite wild and unheard-of, it threatens danger to my peace of mind. I went too far. I brought my justified self-interest into the field, but she struck it down with her own; it is not only our talk; for my heart is pierced by her words so that pity and pain are mingled with my dread of her tears. Yes, I love her; I know it by my dread of her tears; and would like to let her know it by what I say.” He raised his arms and bent over her, yet not touching her, as he said, not without painful hesitation:

“You see, dear flower, indeed your own words make it clear, that you did not speak solely to warn me of Beknechons’s churlish state of mind, but because you share it, because his ideas are yours and your heart is of his party against me. You have said it plain and clear in my face: ‘I am utterly and entirely Amun’s’—those were your words. Was then my comparison so false and can I help it that the taste of it is bitter to me, your husband?”

She took the mantle from her face and looked at him.

“Are you jealous of god, the Hidden One?” she asked. Her mouth was wry, scorn and weeping mingled in the jewelled eyes so close to his that he started and bent back again. “I must retreat,” he thought. “I have gone too far, and must by some means or other withdraw, for my own peace and for the peace of the house. For both stand in sudden and horrible danger. How can it have happened that they are both so threatened, and that this woman’s eyes are all at once so terrible? Everything seemed so safe and plain.” And he recalled many a home-coming, from a journey or from the court, when his first question to his steward was always: “Is all well with the household? Is the mistress happy?” For there abode in his inmost mind a secret misgiving about the peace of the house, its dignity and security—a dim consciousness that its footing was weak and imperilled. And now, by the look in Eni’s angry eyes, by her tears, he knew that he had been right and that his secret dread threatened to fulfil itself.

“No,” said he, “far from it. The idea that I could be jealous of Amun, the god, that I repudiate. Well I know how to make distinction between what is due from you to the Hidden One and what to your spouse. And if, as I think, the expression was displeasing to you, which I used to characterize your familiar intercourse with Beknechons, I am at all times ready and even seek occasion to give you pleasure, and will do so by withdrawing the comparison about being of one house—it shall be as though I had not said it and that it be erased from the record of my words. Are you content?”

Mut let her wet eyes dry of themselves, as though she were unconscious of the tears that stood in them. Her husband had expected gratitude for his complaisance, but she showed none.

“That is but a small matter,” she said, shaking her head.

“She sees that I shrink, in respect of my fear for the peace of my house,” he thought; “and she will use her advantage, as is a woman’s way. She is more a female than she is an individual and my wife. I may not be surprised, though it is always a little painful to see the eternal feminine displaying its wiles in one’s own wife. It would make one laugh ruefully, it has indeed an irritating effect upon me, to perceive that a person thinks to deal according to his individual mind, when all he really does is to repeat the general pattern—mortifying indeed it is! But what use are such thoughts? I can only think, not say them. What I must say is this.” And he went on:

“Probably not of the smallest, indeed, but still the least of what I would say. For I did not think to end with it, but rather to increase your relief by saying that while we have been speaking I have reconsidered my idea of inviting the Babylonian dancers. I have no wish to anger a highly placed man to whom you stand in close relations, by seeming to offend what may seem to me his prejudices but which I have even so no desire to attack. Our entertainment will be brilliant enough without the foreigners.”

“That too, Petepre, is most unimportant,” she said. She called him by his name, he noted it with mounting apprehension.

“What do you mean?” he asked. “Still unimportant? Most unimportant of what? And compared to what?”

“To that which is desirable. To that which is needful,” answered she with an intake of breath. “There should be changes, there must be changes here in this house, my husband, that it may not become a house of offending to the pious, but instead a place of good example. You are the master; who does not bow before you? Who would not grant you the mild refinement of the tolerant sun-sense, by which you order your life and which you practise in all your ways? I see well that one cannot at the same time be for the kingdom and for the stern old ways, for out of the second came the first, and life now in the richness of the kingdom must be otherwise than in the simplicity of the old times. You must not say that I have no understanding of life and its changes. But there must be measure in all things; a remnant of the ancient discipline, out of which sprang the kingdom and the riches of it, must be preserved and held in honour, that the lands become not shamefully corrupt and the sceptre fall from their hands. Would you deny this truth, or would Pharaoh’s wise men deny it, they who occupy themselves with the mobile sun-sense of Atum-Re?”

“Nobody,” responded the fan-bearer, “denies the truth. It might be dearer than even the sceptre. You speak of destiny. We are children of our age, and it seems to me it is always better to live by the truth of the time wherein we are born than to try to guide ourselves by the immemorial past and the stern maxims of antiquity and so doing to deny our own souls. Pharaoh has many mercenaries—Asiatic, Libyan, Nubian, even native. They will guard the realm so long as destiny permits. But we must live in sincerity.”

“Sincerity,” said she, “is easy, and therefore it is not lofty. What would become of men if each would live only in the sincerity of his own desires, claiming for them the dignity of truth and unwilling to be strict with himself to his own improvement? The thief too is sincere, and the drunkard in the gutter, and likewise the adulterer. But shall we by reason of its sincerity pass over their conduct? You wish to live in sincerity, my husband, as a child of your time, and not according to the ancient precepts. But that is barbaric antiquity, where each lives according to his lust; a more advanced age demands the limitation of the personal for the sake of higher considerations.”

“Wherein would you have me alter myself?” he said in some panic.

“In nothing, my husband. You are unchangeable, and far be it from me to shake the sacred moveless calm of your being. Far, too, any reproach because you make nothing your affair in the household or elsewhere in the world but to eat and drink. For if this were not a consequence of your nature, it would be of your rank. Your servants’ hands do all for you as they will do in your tomb. Your part is but to command, or not even this, for you command only one, him who is set over all to direct the house in your name, in the sense that it is the house of a great man of Egypt. Only this, this alone is your affair; a thing of the utmost ease, yet of the last importance: that you should not err nor point wrongly with your finger. Upon that all depends.”

“For years which I no longer count,” said he, “Mont-kaw has been my steward. A worthy soul, who loves me as he should, and is sensitive for all that could give me offense. Never so far as I could tell has he betrayed me in great matters, or hardly in small, and he has administered the household nobly, and fittingly to my state. Has he the misfortune to incur your displeasure?”

She smiled contemptuously at his evasion.

“You know,” she answered, “as well as I and all of Wese that Mont-kaw is dying of his kidneys and for some time has had as little charge of affairs as you yourself. Another rules in his place, whom they call his mouth; and the advancement of this youth in your household must be seen to be believed. But that is not all; for it is said that after Mont-kaw’s expected death this so-called mouth shall step into his place and all that you have shall fall into his hands. You praise your steward for his loyalty to your interest—but in this matter I seek in vain for evidence of it.”

“You are thinking of Osarsiph?”

She bowed her head.

“It is a strange way of putting it,” she said, “to say that I am thinking of him. Might the Hidden One grant there were no ground to think of him! Instead of which one is driven to do so, by this blunder of your steward, and in a way most mortifying to our pride. This ailing man bought him you speak of as a boy, from some travelling pedlars; then, instead of treating him as befitted his base blood and origins, he advanced him and let him take the upper hand in the house; he put all the household under him, my servants as well as yours, till you yourself, my lord, speak of him, a slave, with a readiness most painful to me, which rouses up my anger. For if you had stopped to think and then said: ‘Do you mean the Syrian, the Hebrew lad from the wretched Retenu?’ that would have been natural and fitting. But things have gone very far, your own words betray it, for you spoke as though he were your cousin, naming him familiarly by name and asking: ‘Are you thinking of Osarsiph?’ ”

Thus then she too uttered the name, bringing it over herself with a secret ecstasy and blissful satisfaction. She spoke the mystic syllables, with their echo of death and divinity, syllables conveying to her fate’s utmost sweetness in their sound, with a sob. But she pretended that it was a sob of outraged dignity and once more she hid her face in her mantle.

For the second time Petepre was sincerely alarmed.

“What is it, what is it, my love?” he said, stretching out his hands above her head. “More tears? Let me understand why. I spoke of the slave by his name, as he calls himself and is known to all. Is not a name the quickest way to indicate one’s meaning? And I see that I was correct. You did have in mind that Canaanitish youth who serves me as cup-bearer and reader—to my great satisfaction, I deny it not. Should that not be a ground for you to think favourably of him? I had no part in his purchase. Mont-kaw, who has power to buy and to sell, took him years ago from some honest traders. But it came about that I had speech with him to try him, when he was putting date blossoms to ride in my orchard, and found him exceedingly pleasing, gifted by the gods with graces of body and mind most unusually mingled. For his looks seem but the natural expression of the charm of his spirit, and in turn his mental parts are in invisible correspondence with the outward grace; so that you will, I hope, permit me to call him remarkable, for it is the due and proper word. His origins are not of the best; indeed, one might, if one chose, call his birth virgin; but at least he who begot him was undoubtedly a prince of a sort, a prince of God and king over his flocks, and the boy led a princely life and was favoured with the gifts of favour, where he grew up amongst his father’s flocks. After that, indeed, affliction was his portion, and there were those who set snares for his feet and he walked into them. But even the tale of his sufferings is remarkable; it has spirit and sense, it holds together, as one may say, and in it there rules that same combination which makes his inward and outward parts seem one and the same thing. For it has its own reality, but also seemingly a higher reference as well, and both so related that one is mirrored in the other, which only adds to the youth’s mysterious charm. When he had not ill sustained the test I gave him, he was appointed my cup-bearer and reader—without my stir, out of love of me, of course—and I confess that in this capacity he has become indispensable. But again, he has grown up, without any motion of mine, to have oversight of all the things of the household, and it has proved that the Hidden One grants success through him, in all that he does—I cannot put it otherwise. And now that he has become indispensable to me and to the house, what would you have me do with him?”

Truly, what was there to wish or to do, when he had finished speaking? When he stopped, he looked round with a satisfied smile. He had secured himself strongly against attack and stamped the threatened demand as monstrous, as an unloving offence against himself, which no one could think of inflicting upon him. He could not have dreamed that the woman before him paid no heed to this interpretation. Sitting crouched under her cloak, she had greedily sucked in the honey of his words; her tense excitement had let no syllable escape of all that he said in Joseph’s praise; which greatly diminished its intended effect. Yet, strange to say, Mut remained honourably true to the strict and reasonable dictates which had given rise to this visit to Potiphar. She sat up erect and said:

“I will assume, my husband, that what you have said in favour of the slave is the uttermost that can be justly said. And it is not enough, it is untenable before Egypt’s gods. All this that you have been so good as to tell me, of the wonderful combination of qualities in your servant, and of his mysterious charm—all that counts as nothing in face of Amun’s just demand through my mouth. For I too am a mouthpiece—not alone he whom you say is indispensable to your house—clearly without due reflection, for how can a chance stranger be indispensable in the land of men and in Petepre’s house, which was a house of blessing before this outlander began to wax strong within it? That should never have come to pass. If the lad was once bought, he should have been sent to labour in the fields instead of keeping him in the courtyard and even entrusting him with your cup and lending your ear to his reading because of his insinuating gifts. The talents are not the man; one must make a distinction. For it is so much the worse when a base man has gifts which can make one finally forget his natural baseness. What are those gifts which can justify the elevation of the base? Mont-kaw, your steward, should have asked himself that, who without your orders, as you say, made this lowly slave flourish like a weed in your house, to the shame of all the pious. Will you permit him, now that he is dying, to defy the gods and point with his finger at the Shabirite as his successor, so shaming your house before the world and humbling your own people beneath his foot, so that they gnash their teeth?”

“My dear one,” said the chamberlain, “how you deceive yourself! You are not well informed, to judge from your words, for there is no thought of teeth-gnashing. All the other servants love Osarsiph, from high to low, from the scribe of the buffet to the kennel-boys and to the least of your handmaidens, and take no shame to do his will. I know not whence this report, that folk gnash their teeth at his advancement, for it is quite false. On the contrary, they all seek his glance and gladly vie to do each his best when he comes amongst them; they hang joyously upon his lips when he gives them orders. Yes, even those who had to step aside from their office to make way for him, even they do not look askance, but straight in his eye, for his gifts are irresistible. And why? Because he is not what you say, nor are his gifts a lying appendage to his person, and to be distinguished from it. For they are mingled together and are one, the gifts of one blest with the blessing, so that you might say he deserves them, if that again were not an untenable division between the person and his gifts, or if you can speak at all of merit in connection with natural gifts. But it has come about that on the land-ways and the water-ways folk recognize him from afar, they nudge each other and say: ‘There is Osarsiph, Petepre’s body-servant and mouth to Mont-kaw, an excellent youth, going about the business of his lord, which he will perform to advantage as is his way.’ Moreover, though men look him in the eye, it is said that women avoid it, but give him sidling glances, which is as good a sign. And when he shows himself in the streets of the city and in the bazaar, it often happens that the maidens mount on the house-tops and fling down gold rings upon him from their fingers, that he may look up at them. But he never does.”

Eni listened, in speechless ecstasy. This glorification of Joseph, the description of his popularity, intoxicated her beyond words. Bliss ran like fire through her veins, made her bosom rise and fall and her breath come sobbingly in gasps; her very ears grew red—only with the greatest difficulty could she prevent her lips from curving in a beatific smile as she listened. A benevolent onlooker must have shaken his head at the deluded creature. This praise of Joseph must have confirmed her in her weakness—if we may so express it—for the foreign slave; it must have justified this weakness in the face of her own pride, plunged her still deeper in, made her still less capable of carrying out her purpose of saving her own life. Was that a ground for joy? No, not for joy, but for ecstasy—a distinction which the well-wishing friend, though shaking his head, is bound to make. She suffered, too—that goes without saying. What Petepre said about the women: how they looked, how they cast down their rings, that confirmed her again in her weakness and filled her at the same time with scorching jealousy and with hatred for those whose feelings were her own. It consoled her a little to hear that Joseph did not look at them; and it helped her to persevere in her project of behaving like a reasonable being. She said:

“I will pass over, my friend, your lack of delicacy in entertaining me with the ill behaviour of the women of Wese, be there much or little truth in such reports—for they may have their source in the conceited youth himself or in such as he has bribed with promises.” It cost her less than one would think, to speak thus of the object of her already hopeless love. She did it mechanically, making herself speak like another than herself; her musical voice took on a hollow tone corresponding to the fixity of her features and the vacancy of her gaze. The whole made up a picture of deliberate guile. “It is more important to point out that when you say I am falsely informed as to the situation in the house, your charge is unfounded and falls to the ground. It would be much better if you had not made it. Your habit of taking nothing upon yourself, but of seeing all with distant and detached eye, should make you doubt whether you are yourself so well informed. The truth is that the forwardness of this youth has become a subject for violent anger and widespread disaffection in the house. Dudu, the guardian of your jewel-caskets, has more than once, yes, very often, taken occasion to speak before me, uttering bitter complaints of the offence to the pious in making them suffer the domination of impure stock—”

Petepre laughed. “You have found a wonderful witness, my blossom—take it not ill of me that I say so! Dudu is a pompous puffed-up toad, a quarter-size man and made to be laughed at. How in the world could he be taken seriously in this or any other matter?”

“The size of his person,” she retorted, “is not to the purpose. But if his view is so contemptible, his judgment so worthless, how then is it that he was chosen guardian of your wardrobe?”

“It was a joke,” said Petepre. “Only in jest could one give such a man an office. The other clown, his little mate, they even call vizier, but certainly they are not serious when they do it.”

“I need not call your attention to the difference between them,” she answered. “You know it well enough, though at this moment you would deny it. But it is sad that I must defend your most loyal and worthy servant against your ingratitude. Aside from his small stature Dudu is a serious and dignified man, who in no way deserves the name of clown, and whose judgment is valuable in affairs of the house and of his own honour.”

“He reaches up to here on me,” remarked the captain of the guard, making a line on his shin with the edge of his hand.

Mut was silent for a while.

“You know, my husband,” she said then, with self-control, “that you are uncommon in height and strength, so that Dudu’s size must seem smaller to you than to most other men—or for instance to Djeset, his wife, my woman, and to his children, who are of ordinary size and look up to their father with loving respect.”

“They look up—ha ha!”

“I use the word advisedly, in a higher, poetic sense.”

“So you express yourself even poetically about your Dudu,” Petepre mocked her. “Since you have complained of my bad taste in choice of subjects, I may remind you that you have dwelt overlong upon this conceited fool.”

“We may well leave the subject,” she said compliantly, “if it displeases you. I do not need his evidence or support in the matter of our discussion, since the request I would make is thrice justified of itself; his evidence is not needed to prove that you must grant it.”

“You have a request?” he asked. (“So, then,” he said to himself, rather bitterly, “it is true that she came with some purpose of a more or less troublesome nature. My hope is vain that her visit was simply for the sake of my presence. It cannot make me well-disposed toward her request.”)—He asked:

“And what request?”

“This, my husband: that you should send away the foreign slave, whose name I will not again speak, from your house and courtyard, where he has sprung up like a weed, by dint of culpable negligence and lying favour, so that he has made it a house of offence instead of an example to the lands.”

“Osarsiph—from house and courtyard? What are you thinking of?”

“I think, my husband, of right and justice. I think of the honour of your house, of the gods of Egypt and what you owe to them. Not alone to them, but to yourself and me, your sister-wife, who shakes the sistrum before Amun in the adornment of the Mother, consecrate and set apart. I think of these things and am certain beyond any doubt that I need only remind you of them for your thoughts to unite with mine and for you to grant my request without delay.”

“By sending Osarsiph.... My dear, it may not be. Put it out of your mind, it is in vain, it is a whim which I cannot entertain, for it is a stranger to my mind, and all my thoughts rise up against it.”

“So there we have it,” he said to himself, in anger and bewilderment. “That is the request, and that is why she came to me at this hour and seemed to come that we might talk together. I saw it coming, yet on my side would not see it, so offensive it is to my justified self-interest. I would have granted something small, wishing to seem great to her; but unhappily this that she thinks small and simple to grant is for me inconvenient in the extreme. Not without justification did I feel the approach of a disturbance to my peace. Yet what a pity that she has offered me no occasion to rejoice her heart, for I am reluctant to hate her.”

“Your prejudice, my little flower,” said he, “against the person of this youth, so great as to make you launch so foolish a request, is very sad. Clearly you know nothing of him save for the complaints and curses of mis-shapen and misbegotten persons and have no direct knowledge of his excellent gifts, which, young as he is, could in my opinion exalt him much further than even the stewardship of my house. You call him barbarian and slave—and literally you are right—but is that right enough, if it denies the spirit? Is it the custom and way of our land to esteem a man accordingly as he is free or unfree, native or foreign, and not rather according to his spirit whether it is dark and undisciplined or enlightened through the word and ennobled by the magic of its eloquence? What is our practice in Egypt? For the youth has a blithe and lucid manner of speech, with well-chosen words and charming intonation, writes a decorative hand, and reads aloud from my books as though he spoke himself by the motion of his own spirit, so that all their wit and wisdom seem to come from him and belong to him and one can only wonder. I could wish you to take notice of his parts, to talk graciously with him and win his friendship, which would be much more pleasing to you than that of yon arrogant toad....”

“I will neither take notice of him nor have speech with him,” she said frigidly. “I see that I was mistaken when I thought you had exhausted your praise. You had still something to add. But now I await your word and the granting of my well-justified, my pious request.”

“No such word,” he replied, “can I utter, in response to a request so signally mistaken. It cannot be granted, and for more than one reason; the only question is whether I can make this clear to you. If not, alas, it will not be the more easily granted. I have told you that Osarsiph is not an ordinary slave. He brings increase to our house, he serves it incredibly; who could bring himself to send such a person away? It would be to rob the household; and to him gross injustice for he is free from error and a youth of the finest fibre, so that it would be a rarely unpleasant business simply to send him away without cause, and no one would be prepared to do it.”

“You fear the slave?”

“I fear the gods who are with him, who make everything that is put in his hands succeed, and give him charm in the eyes of all the world. What gods they are is beyond my judgment, but they show themselves powerful in him, beyond a doubt. You would quickly forget such ideas—for instance, of burying him in field labour or selling him, if you would once forget your refusal to know him better. Very soon, I assure you, your heart would feel sympathy and softening toward the youth, for there is more than one point of contact between your life and his; and if I love to have him about me, believe me that it is because often he reminds me of you.”

“Petepre!”

“I say what I say, and what I think is by no means meaningless. Are you not dedicate and set apart for the god, before whom you dance as his bride, and do you not wear your sacrificial adornments before men? Well, then, I have it from the youth himself that he, too, wears such an adornment, invisible, like your own. One must imagine a sort of evergreen, which is a symbol of consecrated youth and bears the significant name of touch-me-not. All this he has told me and I listened not without amazement, for he spoke of strange things. I knew of the gods of Asia, Atys and Ashrat, and the Baals of the growth. But he and his live under a god strange to me, and of amazing jealousy. For this unique god is solitary and feels a great need of loyalty, and he has betrothed himself to them as a bridegroom. It is all strange enough. In principle they each wear the evergreen and are set apart to their god like a bride. But one among them he chooses as a whole sacrifice, and that one must wear it with a difference and as one specially dedicate to the jealous god. And such a one is Osarsiph! They know a thing, he says, which is called sin, and the garden of sin, and have imagined beasts which leer from among the branches in the garden, ugly beyond conception. There are three of these and they are called ‘Shame,’ ‘Guilt,’ and ‘Mocking Laughter.’ But now I will ask you two questions: First, can one have a better servant and steward than one born to loyalty, and fearing sin in his very bones? And second, was it too much to say when I spoke of a point of contact between you and this youth?”

Ah, how Mut’s heart contracted at her husband’s words! Agony had consumed it when he spoke of the maidens who threw down their rings; but that had been nothing compared with the icy sword which pierced it when she understood why the daughters of Wese had not succeeded in drawing his gaze upon them. A frightful anguish, a presentiment of all she was to bear, came over her and painted itself openly on the pale agonized face turned up to Petepre. If we try to put ourselves in her place we shall see that the situation did not lack an element of absurdity. For why was she struggling and wrestling with her husband’s obstinacy, if he was speaking the truth? If the healing and revealing dream which had brought her hither was but a lying dream? If he from whom she would save her own life and her husband’s was a whole sacrifice, already promised, devoted, and set apart? What an involvement was this, in which she had feared to involve herself? She had not strength, she dared not attempt to cover her eyes with her hand; they stared into space, where she seemed to see the three beasts in the garden: Shame, Guilt, and Mocking Laughter, of whom the last whined like a hyena. It was unbearable. She was overwhelmed. Only away with him, more than ever now, since those healing dreams had been all a lie—thrice shameless dreams, since it would be quite vain were she even to throw down to him the rings from her fingers! “Yes, I must fight,” she thought, “more than ever now, if this be true! But do I believe it? Or do I not rather cherish a secret hope that my dreams will prove stronger than his bond, will overpower it so that he will return my gaze and still my blood? Do I not hope and fear with a force which in my soul I believe to be irresistible? And seeing that clearly, once for all, must he not away, out of my sight, out of this house, that my life may be saved? There sits my fat-armed husband, like a tower of strength; Dudu, who can beget children, reaches up to his shin. He commands the troops. From him and his cherishing have I to hope healing and saving, from his alone.”—It was this thought of taking refuge in her husband, her nearest, of trying on him the power of her craving for help, that spoke when she said in a clear ringing voice:

“I will not enter further upon your words, my friend, nor try by contending to refute them. It would be idle. For what you say is not to the point of our dispute, there is no need for you to say it; you need only speak the words: ‘I will not.’ For all the rest is but the cloak for your inflexible will; it is the iron firmness of your resolve, the granite determination which informs all that you say. Should I then enter into unavailing and ungrateful strife, since after all as a woman I must rather admire and love your strength? It is rather something else for which I wait—something which without that iron resolve would mean little or nothing, but with it is rich and glorious: I mean your gracious granting of this boon for which I plead. This hour is not like other hours; it is for us two alone, and full of the expectancy in which I came to it—came to beg that your strong will should incline to me and give me my desire, saying: ‘This offence shall be removed from the house, and Osarsiph shall be deprived of his office and sold and sent away.’ Shall I hear those words, my husband and lord?”

“You have heard, my dear, that you cannot hear them, not with the best of goodwill on my part. I cannot sell Osarsiph and send him away, I cannot desire to, the will is lacking.”

“You cannot will it? Then your will is your master, and not you master of your will?”

“My child, these are hair-splittings. Is there a difference between me and my will, one being servant and the other master and one lording it over the other? Master your own will, and will what is repugnant, what is entirely repulsive to yourself!”

“I am ready to do so,” said she, and flung back her head, “when higher things come into play, such as honour, pride, and the kingdom.”

“But nothing of that sort is involved here,” he replied, “or rather what is involved is respect for sound sense, the pride of wisdom, and the kingdom of moderation.”

“Think not of these, Petepre!” she begged in her ringing voice. “Think alone of this hour, this single hour, and its expectancy, and my coming to you unannounced to disturb your rest. Lo, I put my arms about your knee and implore you to grant me this favour, my husband, and to send me away in peace.”

“It is pleasant to me,” he responded, “to feel your lovely arms about my knee; yet however pleasant, they cannot make me yield; it is but due to their softness that my reproach is so gentle for the disturbing of my repose and the heedlessness toward my well-being. For that you have no concern; yet even so I will speak of it and tell you something in this hour when we are alone together. Know then,” he said with a certain mysterious solemnity, “that I must keep Osarsiph, not alone for the good of the house, to which he gives such increase, or because he reads my books in praise of wisdom as no other can. For another reason he is supremely important to my well-being. In saying that he gives me a feeling of self-confidence I do not say it all; it is even more indispensable than that. His mind is fertile in invention of easements of every sort; but of these the chief is that by day and hour he speaks to me of myself in a favouring light, almost divine, and strengthens my heart in my own regard, so that I feel—”

“Let me wrestle with him,” she said, holding his knee in a closer embrace, “let me defeat him, who only knows words to strengthen your heart and your confidence in yourself. I can do it better. I will give you power to strengthen your own heart in deeds, through yourself, in fulfilling the expectation of this hour and giving back the boy to the desert whence he came! For how greatly, my husband, will you feel yourself when you have consoled me and I go from you in peace!”

“Do you think so?” he asked, blinking. “Then hearken: I will command that when my steward Mont-kaw departs this life, for he is near his end, Osarsiph shall not be head in his place, but another, perhaps Khamat, the scribe of the buffet. But Osarsiph shall remain in the house.”

She shook her head.

“Therewith, my friend, is my need not served, nor will any increase of strength or knowledge come to you. For my wish would be but half or partly granted and no satisfaction be given to my expectation. Osarsiph must go from the house.”

“Then,” said he quickly, “if that is not enough, then I withdraw what I said, and the youth shall come to the headship of the house.”

She relaxed her arms.

“I hear your final word?”

“Another, alas, I have not to give.”

“Then I will go,” she breathed, and stood up.

“Yes,” he acquiesced. “But after all, it was a charming hour. I will send presents after you to rejoice you: an ointment-dish of ivory, carven with eyes and fish and mice.”

She turned her back and moved toward the columned archway. There for a moment she paused, supporting one hand, still holding her garment’s folds, upon a column, and leaning her forehead against it so that her face was shrouded. No one has ever known how it looked in that hidden face.

Then she clapped her hands and went out.