“Nay, nay,” she protested.  “Think not so harshly of me.  I am—­I came—­” she faltered and paused.  He did not help or spare her.  He had come to learn why she had done this thing, why she had said that, and why she had repulsed him without explanation, when there was unmistakable preference for him in her unstudied acts.  He held his peace and waited for her to proceed.  Meanwhile Rachel suffered cruelly.  She had no thought in her mind concerning her conduct toward him.  It was the shameful event of the morning, which must be told to explain her presence before Athor, that made her cover her crimson face at last.  Kenkenes silenced the protests of his gallantry, and drawing her hands away, lifted her face on the tips of his fingers and waited.

While they stood thus, Deborah, exhausted and praying, staggered into the inclosure.

“Rachel!” she panted.  “The serving-men—­thou art pursued!” The fat courier, purple of countenance and breathing hard, appeared in the opening.  Rachel shrank against Kenkenes and Deborah dropped on her knees between the pair and the servitor.

“Out of the way, hag!” the man puffed.  “Let me at yon slave.  Out!” He struck at Deborah with a short mace but Kenkenes caught his arm and thrust him aside.

“Go, go back to the camp,” he said to the old woman.  “No harm shall befall Rachel.”  Raising her, he put her behind him, and advanced toward the courier.

“Hast thou words with me?” he said coolly.  “What wilt thou?”

“The girl.  Give her up!”

“Nay, but thou art peremptory.  What wilt thou with her?”

“For the harem of the Pharaoh’s chief adviser,” the man retorted.

The blood in Kenkenes’ veins seemed to become molten; flashes of fierce light blinded him and his sinews hardened into iron.  He bounded forward and his fingers buried themselves in soft and heated flesh.

The first glimmer of reason through his murderous insanity was the consciousness of a rain of blows upon his head and shoulders, and a blackening face settling back to the earth before him.

He released his grip on the throat of the strangling servitor and flung off his other assailants.  For a moment, stunned by the hard usage at the hands of the reinforcing men, he staggered, and seemed about to succumb.  The men pursued him to finish their work, but as he eluded them, it seemed that a third person—­a woman all in white with extended arms—­came into their view.

Kenkenes saw the foremost, a tall Nubian in a striped tunic, stop in his tracks, and the second, smaller and lighter but a Nubian also, following immediately behind, bumped against his fellow.

Mouths agape, eyes staring, they stood and marveled.  The strange presence, they discovered at once, was neither a human being nor an apparition.  It was stone—­a statue.

“Sacrilege!” the first exploded.  “A—­a—­by Amen, it is the slave herself!”