The singer sang as spontaneously as a bird sings. She did not catch the words, but something in the fervor of the music told her it was a song of love--and a song of love unsatisfied. There was a pathos in it that touched the fountain of her tears and awoke to willingness that impulse in her womanhood that longs to comfort.

As she stood in an att.i.tude of rapt attention. Kenkenes rounded a curve in the valley just ahead of her. The song died suddenly on his lips and the color deepened in his cheeks.

"Fie!" he exclaimed. "Here thou art, O Athor, catching me in the imperfection of my practice. Now will the keen edge of their perfect beauty be dulled upon thine ear when I come to lift my tuneful devotions to thee."

"And it was thou singing?" she asked.

"It was I--and Pentaur; mine the voice; Pentaur's the song."

"Together ye have wrought an eloquent harmony, but such a voice as thine would gild the pale effort of the poorest words," she said earnestly. "What dost thou with thy voice?"

"Once I won me a pretty compliment with it," he said softly, bending his head to look at her. She flushed and her eyes fell.

"Nay, it is but my pastime and at the command of my friends," he continued. "See. This is what has made me sing."

He unslung his wallet and took out of it a statuette of creamy chalk.

"Thus far has the Athor of the hills progressed." He put it into her hands for examination. The face was complete, the minute features as perfect as life, the plaits of long hair and all the figure exquisitely copied and shaped. The pedestal was yet in rough block. Rachel inspected it, wondering. Finally she looked up at him with praise in her eyes.

"Dost thou forgive me?" he asked.

"It is for me to ask thy forgiveness," she answered. "So we be equally indebted and therefore not in debt."

"Not so. I know the joy of creating uncramped, and the joy of copying such a model far outweighs any small delight thy little vanity may have experienced. Thy vanity? Hast thou any vanity?"

"Nay, I trust not," she replied laughingly. "Vanity is self-esteem run to seed."

"Sage! Let me make haste to carve the pedestal that I may know how low to do obeisance to wisdom. Hold it so, I pray thee."

He took the statue and set it on a flat cornice jutting from the stone wall. Rachel obediently steadied it. He selected from his tools a knife with a rounded point of wonderful keenness and smoothed away the chalk in bulk. They stood close together, the sculptor bending from his commanding height to work. From time to time he shifted his position, touching her hand often and saying little.

The pedestal given shape, he began its elaboration. Pattern after pattern of graceful foliation emerged till the design a.s.sumed the intricate complexity of the Egyptic style.

Rachel watched with absorbed interest, her head unconsciously settling to one side in critical contemplation. Kenkenes, pressing the blade firmly upon the chalk, felt her cheek touch his shoulder for a fraction of a second; his fingers lost their steadiness and direction, but not their strength; the blade slipped, and the fierce edge struck the white hand that held the statuette.

With a cry he dropped the knife, flung one arm about her and drew her very close to him. The image toppled down and was broken on the rock below, but he saw only the fine scarlet thread on the soft flesh.

Again and again he pressed the wounded hand to his lips, his eyes dimmed with tears of compunction.

"O, Rachel, Rachel!" he exclaimed in a sudden burst of pa.s.sionate contrition. "Must even the most loving hand in Egypt be lifted against thee?"

The great content on the glorified face against his breast was all the expression of pardon that he asked.

"My love! My Rachel!" he whispered. "Ah, ye generous G.o.ds! indulge me still further. Let this, your richest gift, be mine."

The G.o.ds!

Stunned and only realizing that she must undo his clasp, she freed herself and retreated a little s.p.a.ce from him.

And then she remembered.

Slowly and relentlessly it came home to her that this was one of the abominable idolaters, and she had forsworn such for ever. These very arms that had held her so shelteringly had been lifted in supplication to the idols, and the lips, whose kiss she had awaited, would swear to love her, by an image. The pitiless truth, once admitted, smote her cruelly. She covered her face with her hands.

Kenkenes, amazed and deeply moved, went to her immediately.

"What have I said?" he begged. "What have I done?"

What had he done, indeed? But to have spoken, though to explain, would have meant capitulation. She wavered a moment, and then turning away, fled up the valley toward the camp--not from him, but from herself.

CHAPTER XVI

TEE ADVICE OF HOTEP

If Mentu, looking up from the old murkets, noted that the face of his son was weary and sad, he laid it to the sudden heat of the spring; for now it was the middle of March and Ra had grown ardent and the marshes malarious. The old housekeeper, to whom the great artist mentioned his son's indisposition, glanced sharply at the young master, touched his hand when she served him at table, and felt his forehead when she pretended to smooth his hair. And having made her furtive examination, the astute old servant told the great artist that the young master was not ill. If she had further information to impart, Mentu did not give her the opportunity, for had she not said that Kenkenes was well? So he fell to his work again.

Senci noted it, and sorrowful Io, but they, like Mentu, ascribed it to the miasmas and said nothing to the young man about himself.

But Hotep was a penetrative man, and more hidden things than his friend's ailment had been an open secret to his keen eye. He did not care to know which one of the b.u.t.terflies was the fluttering object of Kenkenes' bounteous love, for Hotep knew that those high-born Memphian women, who were openly partial to the handsome young sculptor, loved him for his comeliness and his silken tongue alone. It would take a profounder soul than any they had displayed to understand and sympathize with the restive genius hidden under the smooth exterior they saw.

Therefore, with some impatience, Hotep conceded that his friend was in love, and presumably throwing himself away. So the scribe purposed, even though the attempt were inevitably fruitless, to win Kenkenes out of his dream.

One faint dawn he entered the temple to pray for his own cause at the shrine of the lovers' G.o.ddess.

In the half-night of the vast interior, at the foot of the sumptuous pedestal of Athor, he distinguished another supplicant, kneeling. But there was a hopelessness in the droop of the bowed head and a tenseness in the interlaced fingers of the clasped hands, which proved that Athor's answer had not been propitious.

Hotep knew at once who besought the G.o.ddess. Setting his offering of silver and crystal on the altar, the scribe departed with silent step.

But without, he ground his teeth and execrated the giver of pain to Kenkenes.

In mid-afternoon of the same day Hotep's chariot drew up at the portals of Mentu's house, and the scribe in his most splendid raiment was conducted to Kenkenes. The young sculptor was alone.

"What was it, a palsy or the sun which kept thee at home this day?" was Hotep's greeting. "Nine is a mystic number and is fruitful of much gain. Eight times within a month have I come for thee. The ninth did supply thee. Blessed be the number."

Kenkenes smiled. "But there are seven Hathors, and five days in the epact--and the Radiant Three. To me it seemeth there are many good numbers."

Hotep plucked his sleeve.

"Come, I will show thee the best of all--One, the One."

Kenkenes arose. "Let me robe myself befittingly, then."

"Not too effectively," the scribe cried after him. "I would not have thee blight my chances with the full blaze of thy beauty."

When Kenkenes returned Hotep looked at him with another thought than had been uppermost in his mind since he had noted his friend's dejection. This time, he was impatient with Kenkenes.

"And such a man as this will permit a woman to break his heart!"