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!”

Then was the young sculptor taken to the palace of the Pharaoh.  On its roof, in the great square shadow of its double towers, he was presented to a dainty little lady, whose black eyes grew large and luminous at the coming of the scribe.  She was Masanath, the youngest and only unwedded child of Har-hat, the king’s adviser.  Her oval face had a uniform rose-leaf flush, her little nose was distinctly aquiline, her little mouth warm and ripe.  Her teeth were dazzlingly white, and, like a baby’s, notched on the edges with minute serrations.  But with all her tininess, she planted her sandal with decision and scrutinized whosoever addressed her in a way that was eloquent of a force and perception larger by far than the lady they characterized.

And this was the love of Hotep.  Kenkenes smiled.  The top of her pretty head was not nearly on a level with his shoulders, and the small hand she extended had the determined grip with which a baby seizes a proffered finger.  A vision of the golden Israelite rose beside her and the smile vanished.

The day was warm and the courtiers in search of a breeze were scattered about the palace-top in picturesque groups.  Masanath occupied a diphros, or double chair, and a female attendant, standing behind her, stirred the warm air with a perfumed fan.  The lady was on the point of sharing her seat with one of her guests, when Har-hat, who had been lounging by himself on the parapet, sauntered over to his daughter’s side.

“My father,” she said, “the son of Mentu, the first friend of the noble Hotep.”

Kenkenes had noticed, with a chill, the approach of the fan-bearer, and, angry with himself for his unreasoning perturbation, strove to greet him composedly.  But he could not force himself into graciousness.  The formal obeisance might have been made appropriately to his bitterest enemy.

“The son of Mentu and I have met before,” the fan-bearer declared laughingly.  “But I scarce should have recognized him in this man of peace had not his stature been impressed upon me in that hour when first I met him.”  The fan-bearer paused to enjoy the wonder of his daughter and the scribe, and the hardening face of Kenkenes.

“But for the agility the gods have seen fit to leave me in mine advancing years,” he continued, “this self-same courteous noble would have brained me with a boat-hook on an occasion of much merrymaking, a month agone.”