"Comfort? Thou, in trouble? Thou, the light-hearted?" she laughed.

"Nay; I am discontented, but I might as well hope to heave the skies away with my shoulders as to rebel against mine oppression. So I came to be petted into submission."

"Nay, dost thou hear him?" the lady cried. "And he came, because he was sure he would get it!"

"And he will go away because the Lady Ta-meri means he shall not have it," he exclaimed. He reached toward his coif and immediately a panic-stricken little hand stayed him.

"Nay," she said softly. "I was but retaliating. Hast thou not plagued me, and may I not tease thee a little in revenge? Say on."

"My--but now I bethink me, I ought not to tell thee. It savors of that which so offends thy nice sense of gentility--labor," he said, sinking back in his easy att.i.tude again.

"Fie, Kenkenes," she said. "Hath some one put thy slavish love of toil under ban? Does that oppress thee?" He reproved her with a pat on the nearest hand.

"The king toils; the priests toil; the powers of the world labor. None but the beautiful idle may be idle, and that for their beauty's sake.

Nay, it is not that I may not work, but I may not work as I wish and I am heart-sick therefore."

His last words ended in a tone of genuine dejection. His eyes were fixed on the gra.s.s of the nook and his brows had knitted slightly. The expression was a rare one for his face and in its way becoming--for the moment at least. The hand he had patted drew nearer, and at last, after a little hesitancy, was laid on his black hair. He lifted his face and took cheer, from the light in her eyes, to proceed.

"Since I may speak," he began, "I shall. Ta-meri, thou knowest that as a sculptor I work within limits. The stature of mine art must crouch under the bounds of the ritual. It is not boasting if I say that I see, with brave eyes, that Egypt insults herself when she creates horrors in stone and says, 'This is my idea of art.' And these things are not human; neither are they beasts--they are grotesques that verge so near upon a semblance of living things as to be piteous. They thwart the purpose of sculpture. Why do we carve at all, if not to show how we appear to the world or the world appears to us? Now for my rebellion. I would carve as we are made; as we dispose ourselves; aye, I would display a man's soul in his face and write his history on his brow. I would people Egypt with a host of beauty, grace and naturalness--"

"Just as if they were alive?" Ta-meri inquired with interest.

"Even so--of such naturalness that one could guess only by the hue of the stone that they did not breathe."

The lady shrugged her shoulders and laughed a little.

"But they do not carve that way," she protested. "It is not sculpture.

Thou wouldst fill the land with frozen creatures--ai!" with another little shrug. "It would be haunted and spectral. Nay, give me the old forms. They are best."

Kenkenes fairly gasped with his sudden descent from earnest hope to disappointment. A flood of half-angry shame dyed his face and the wound to his sensibilities showed its effect so plainly that the beauty noted it with a sudden burst of compunction.

"Of a truth," she added, her voice grown wondrous soft, "I am full of sympathy for thee, Kenkenes. Nay, look up. I can not be happy if thou art not."

"That suffices. I am cheered," he began, but the note of sarcasm in his voice was too apparent for him to permit himself to proceed. He caught up the lyre, and drawing up a diphros--a double seat of fine woods--rested against it and began to improvise with an a.s.sumption of carelessness. Ta-meri sank back in her chair and regarded him from under dreamy lids--her senses charmed, her light heart won by his comeliness and talent. Kenkenes became conscious of her inspection, at last, and looked up at her. His eyes were still bright with his recent feeling and the hue in his cheeks a little deeper. The admiration in her face became so speaking that he smiled and ran without pausing into one of the love-lyrics of the day. Breaking off in its midst, he dropped the lyre and said with honest apology in his voice:

"I crave thy pardon, Ta-meri. What right had I to weight thee with my cares! It was selfish, and yet--thou art so inviting a confidante, that it is not wholly my fault if I come to seek of thee, my oldest and sweetest friend, the woman comfort that was bereft me with my rightful comforter."

"Neither mother nor sister nor lady-love," she mused. He nodded, but the slight interrogative emphasis caught him, and he looked up at her.

He nodded again.

"Nay, nor lady-love, thanks to the luck of Nechutes."

"Nechutes is no longer lucky," she said deliberately.

"No matter," Kenkenes insisted. "I shall be gone eighteen days, and his luck will have changed before I can return."

"Thine auguries seem to please thee," she pouted.

He put the back of her jeweled hand against his cheek.

"Nay, I but comfort thee at the sacrifice of mine own peace."

"A futile sacrifice."

"What!"

"A futile sacrifice!"

"Ah, Ta-meri, beseech the G.o.ddess Ma to forget thy words!" he cried in mock horror. She tossed her head, and instantly he got upon his feet, catching up his coif as he did so.

"Come, bid me farewell," he said putting out his hand, "and one of double sweetness, for I doubt me much if Nechutes will permit a welcome when I return."

"Nechutes will not interfere in mine affairs," she said, as she rose.

"Nay, I shall know if that be true when I return," he declared.

She stamped her foot.

"Fie!" he laughed. "Already do I begin to doubt it."

She turned from him and kept her face away. Kenkenes went to her and, taking both her hands in his, drew her close to him. She did not resist, but her face reproached him--not for what he was doing, but for what he had done. With his head bent, he looked down into her eyes for a moment. Her red mouth with its sulky pathos was almost irresistible.

But he only pressed one hand to his lips.

"I must wait until I return," he said from the doorway, and was gone.

On the broad bosom of the Nile at sunset, four strong oarsmen were speeding him swiftly up to Thebes. Off the long wharves at the southernmost limits of the city, the rapid boat overtook and pa.s.sed low-riding, slowly moving stone-barges laden with quarry slaves. The unwieldy craft progressed heavily, nearer and within the darkening shadow of the Arabian hills. Kenkenes watched them as long as they were in sight, an unwonted pity making itself felt in his heart. For even in the dusk he distinguished many women and the immature figures of children; and none knew the quarry life better than he, who was a worker in stone.

[1] In ancient Egypt burglary was reduced to a system and governed by law. The chief of robbers received all the spoil and to him the victimized citizen repaired and, upon payment of a certain per cent. of the value of the object stolen, received his property again. The original burglar and the chief of robbers divided the profits. This traffic was countenanced in Egypt until the country pa.s.sed into British hands.

[2] The ape was sacred to and an emblem of Toth, the male deity of Wisdom and Law.

CHAPTER IV

THE PROCESSION OF AMEN

Thebes Diospolis, the hundred-gated, was in holiday attire. The great suburb to the west of the Nile had emptied her mult.i.tudes into the solemn community of the G.o.ds. Besides her own inhabitants there were thousands from the entire extent of the Thebaid and visitors even from far-away Syene and Philae. It was an occasion for more than ordinary pomp. The great G.o.d Amen was to be taken for an outing in his ark.

Every possible manifestation of festivity had been sought after and displayed. The air was a-flutter with party-colored streamers.

Garlands rioted over colossus, peristyle, obelisk and sphinx without conserving pattern or moderation. The dromos, or avenue of sphinxes, was carpeted with palm and nelumbo leaves, and copper censers as large as caldrons had been set at equidistance from one another, and an unceasing reek of aromatics drifted up from them throughout the day.

For once the magnificence of the wondrous city of the G.o.ds was set down from its usual preeminence in the eyes of the wondering spectator, and the vastness of the mult.i.tude usurped its place. The bari of Kenkenes seeking to round the island of sand lying near the eastern sh.o.r.e opposite the village of Karnak, met a solid pack of boats. The young sculptor took in the situation at once, and, putting about, found a landing farther to the north. There he made a portage across the flat bar of sand to the arm of quiet water that separated the island from the eastern sh.o.r.e. Crossing, he dismissed his eager and excited boatmen and struck across the noon-heated valley toward the temple.

The route of the pageant could be seen from afar, cleanly outlined by humanity. It extended from Karnak to Luxor and, turning in a vast loop at the Nile front, countermarched over the dromos and ended at the tremendous white-walled temple of Amen. Between the double ranks of sightseers there was but chariot room. The side Kenkenes approached sloped sharply from the dromos toward the river, and the rearmost spectators had small opportunity to behold the pageant. The mult.i.tude here was less densely packed. Kenkenes joined the crowd at this point.