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"Thou wilt not learn it from the princess," Har-hat exclaimed. "Ah!" Ta-user ejaculated, a world of innocence, surprise and wounded feeling in the word. "Thy words do not become thee, Har-hat," Meneptah said. The fan-bearer closed his lips and gazed fixedly at the princess. She drooped her head and went on in a voice low with hurt. "The gods judge me if my every word is not true!
Cold with dismay and shaking with her sudden descent from hope to despair, Masanath watched him disappear into the dark. "O most ill-timed, iron continence!" she wailed under her breath. But the change which had come over Ta-user interested her immediately. Fascinated, she forgot to hide again, but the light of the single lamp did not penetrate to her position.
I should still be a penniless prince, more useless than ever." He sat down on the broad lintel capping the parapet, but retained her hand. "Ta-user," he continued, as she opened her lips to speak, "what wouldst thou have me do?" "I would have thee be useful." "I shall throw away my lordly trappings," he said, "and become a lifter of the shadoof this day."
There were nineteen barges approaching in the form of two crescents like a parenthesis, the horns up and down the Nile, and in the center of the inclosed space was Meneptah's float. Here was only the royal family, the king, queen, Ta-user, and the two princes, who took the place of fan-bearers in attendance on their father.
What have I won therefrom? Naught save, perchance, the smiles of Egypt at my disappointment." Meneptah's face flushed. "Say on, O my kinswoman," he said, moving uncomfortably. "Kinswoman! And a year agone, I thought to hear, 'O my daughter." The color in the king's face deepened. "Wilt thou reproach me, Ta-user, for my son's wilfulness?" was his tactless reply.
She laid down the dice, during the momentary abstraction of her playing-mates, and murmuring that she was tired, came and sat at the feet of her champion. "Wherefore dost thou retreat, Io?" Ta-user asked. "Art vanquished?" "At one game, aye!" the girl replied vehemently.
Har-hat sprang forward as the king lifted an amazed and angry face. "Back!" she cried, motioning at him with her full arm. "It is time the Hathors overtook thee, thou ineffable knave!" "I protest!" the fan-bearer cried, losing his temper. "Enough of this play," Meneptah said sternly. "Go on with thy tale, Ta-user. I would know the truth of this."
Art thou so little versed in the ways of men that thou dost wonder why we love or how we love or whom we love? The very fact that thou art different from Seti's surroundings is like to make him love thee best." "I am not jealous; only he hath so much to tell of Ta-user." "Aye, since she is like to become his sister, it is not strange. But what says he of her?"
He broke open the tomb of Siptah and Ta-user, threw out their bodies to the jackals, obliterated the inscriptions, enlarged the crypt, put his own and his father's history on the walls and used it for his mausoleum when he died. And this was the deadliest retaliation he could inflict in his father's name.
Thou knowest the breach between the Pharaoh and his brother, Amon-meses, is but feebly bridged till Rameses shall heal the wound in marriage with Ta-user. His failure, added to the vehement contempt he displayed for her last night, shall make that breach ten times as deep and ever receding, so there can be no healing of it." Har-hat flung his head back and laughed heartily.
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