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Then when he stopped exhausted, at last she spoke, saying: "What! do you love now more greatly than you fear, as the divine Prince of Kesh loved after Amen's Star had sung to him. May your fate be happier, O noble Abi, but that, since it is not lawful that I should tell it to you, you shall discover.
In the hands of Rames was the tall, golden vase of wine, and as Amathel thrust back his chair its topmost ivory bar struck the foot of the vase and tilted it, so that the red wine poured in a torrent over the Prince's head and gorgeous robes, staining him from his crest of plumes to his feet as though with blood. Up sprang the Prince of Kesh roaring with fury. "Dog-descended slave!" he shouted.
Listen now, for this is not in the decree or in the letters," she added, bending towards him and whispering. "Egypt has spies in Kesh, and, being industrious, I have read their reports. The people there hate the upstart race that rules them, and the king, who alone is left now that Amathel is dead, is old and half-witted, for all that family drink too much.
She has sent an embassy of atonement of two thousand picked soldiers to the King of Kesh, bearing with them the embalmed body of the divine Amathel and many royal gifts." "That is good enough in its way," said Pharaoh. "But why two thousand men, whereof the cost will be very great, when a score would have sufficed?
"Nay, nay, my daughter," said Pharaoh, "it is scarcely fitting that a queen of Egypt should sing before all this noble company." "Why not, my father?" she asked. "To-night we all do honour to the heir of his Majesty of Kesh.
But after they had gone and he had eaten he sent for Mermes, the Captain of the Guard of Amen and his friend, and questioned him. "The last thing I remember," he said, "was seeing the drunken Prince of Kesh fighting with your son, that handsome, fiery-eyed Count Rames whom some fool, or enemy, had set to wait upon him at table.
Come, Queen, it is to you that they should speak, and not to me, who am but a general of your province, Kesh," and he followed her to the inner court, where, in front of the sanctuary, was a chair, on which, at his prayer, she seated herself, as a mighty Queen should do.
This, indeed," she added slowly, "I should wish to do, since although Rames had suffered intolerable insult such as no high-born man can be asked to bear even from a prince, and he and all of them were but fighting to save their lives and to show the Nubians that we are not cowards here in Egypt, without doubt they have conquered and slain the heir of Kesh and his black giants who were our guests, and for this deed their lives are forfeit."
There, at the frontier post, he waited till the rest of the soldiers should join him, bringing with them the hastily embalmed body of Prince Amathel whom he had slain, and the royal gifts to the King of Kesh. Then, without a moment's delay, he sailed southwards with his little army on the long journey, fearing lest if he tarried, orders might come to him to return to Thebes.
"Say not such evil-omened words," she sobbed, "since you know well that if he is taken hence for whose sake I endure all these things, then I must follow him over the edge of the world. Moreover, you are unjust. Did I slay the Prince of Kesh, or was it another?" "Another, Queen, but for your sake." "And would you have had me wed Abi the hog, the murderer of my father, and of your lord?
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