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Then Ra'hel saw how beautiful was Tahoser, but the discovery excited no evil feeling in her heart; Tahoser's beauty softened, instead of irritating her as it did Thamar; she could not believe that such perfection concealed a vile and perfidious soul; and in this respect her youthful candour judged more correctly than the long experience of her maid.
Tahoser, who shared the throne of the Pharaoh, raised her beautiful bare feet and pulled them back under her, pale with terror. "Well," said the Pharaoh to Mosche, "you see that the skill of my magicians equals, and even surpasses yours; their rods have turned into serpents like that of Aharon. Invent another prodigy if you seek to convince me."
Her maidenly scruples, stifled for a time by passion, resumed their power in the presence of reality. The young man, thinking that timidity, the companion of misfortune, alone prevented Tahoser from entering the house, said to her in a soft, musical voice marked by a foreign accent, "Enter, maiden, and do not tremble so. My home is large enough to shelter you.
Tahoser remembered having heard him whisper that name while she was fanning him in his sleep. "He thought of her even in his dreams. No doubt Ra'hel is her name." And the poor child felt in her breast a sharp pang as if all the uræus snakes of the entablatures, all the royal asps of the Pharaonic crowns, had struck their venomous fangs in her heart.
"The Pharaoh beloved of Phré, favourite of Ammon Ra, has sent these gifts, I cannot take them back. Keep them until Tahoser is found. You shall answer for them on your head. Have them put away in rooms and guarded by faithful servants," replied the envoy of the King.
When she had finished and rose refreshed and radiant, a tame ibis, which had gravely watched her, drew itself up on its two long legs, stretched out its long neck, and flapped its wings two or three times as if to applaud her. Having finished her toilet, Tahoser resumed her place at the door of the house and waited for Poëri.
"Come, Timopht!" said His Majesty, "rise up, run, and despatch emissaries on all sides; have temples, palaces, houses, villas, gardens, yea, the meanest of huts searched, and find Tahoser. Send chariots along every road; have the Nile traversed in every direction by boats; go yourself and ask those whom you meet if they have not seen such and such a woman.
She is heart and hand with me in our proposed expedition to Egypt." "Will you go there for the honeymoon, sir?" asked Hope. "Not exactly for the honeymoon, since we are to be married in spring, and my expedition to the tomb of Queen Tahoser cannot start until the late autumn. But Mrs. Braddock will come with me. That is only just, since it will be her money which will furnish the sinews of war."
"I made a great mistake," said Tahoser to herself, "when I presented myself to Poëri in the humble attitude of a suppliant, trusting to my charms overpraised by flatterers. Fool that I was! I acted as a soldier who should go to war without breastplate or weapons.
Tahoser, encouraged by the friendly words of Poëri, abandoned her supplicating attitude and rose. A rich glow flushed her cheek but now so pale; shame came back to her with hope; she blushed at the strange action to which love had driven her; she hesitated to pass the threshold which she had crossed so often in her dreams.
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