This, to the glory of Egypt!  Woman was defended, revered, exalted above her sisters of any contemporary nation.  No haremic seclusion for her; no semi-contemptuous toleration of her; no austere limits laid upon her uses.  She bared her face to the thronging streets; she reveled beside her brother; she worshiped with him; she admitted no subserviency to her lord beyond the pretty deference that it pleased her to pay; she governed his household and his children; she learned, she wrote, she wore the crown.  She might have a successor but no supplanter; an Egyptian of the dynasties before the Persian dominance could have but one wife at a time; none but kings could be profligate, openly.  So, while Babylonia led her maidens to a market, while Ethiopia ruled hers with a rod, while Arabia numbered hers among her she-camels, Egypt gloried in national chivalry and spiritual love.

This was the sentiment of the nation, by the lips of Khu-n-Aten, the artist king: 

“Sweet love fills my heart for the queen; may she ever keep the hand of the Pharaoh.”

Whatever Egypt’s mode of worshiping Khem and Isis, nothing could set at naught this clean, impulsive, sincere avowal.

Here, then, openly and in perfect propriety was a woman abroad with her suitor.

She might have been eighteen years old, but there was nothing girlish in her gorgeous beauty.  She was a red rose, full-blown.

Her robes were a double thickness of loose-meshed white linen, with a delicate stripe of scarlet; her head-dress a single swathing of scarlet gauze.  She wore not one, but many kinds of jewels, and her anklets and armlets tinkled with fringes of cats and hawks in carnelian.  Her hair was brilliant black and unbraided.  Her complexion was transparent, and the underlying red showed deeply in the small, full-lipped mouth; like a stain in the cheeks; like a flush on the brow, and even faintly on the dainty chin.  Her eyes were large and black, with the amorous lid, and lined with kohl beneath the lower lash.  Her profile showed the exquisite aquiline of the pure-blooded Egyptian.

Aside from the visible evidences of charm there was an atmosphere of femininity that permeated her immediate vicinity with a witchery little short of enchantment.  She was the Lady Ta-meri, daughter of Amenemhat, nomarch[5] of Memphis.

The Egyptian accompanying the litter was nearly thirty years of age.  He was an example of the other type of the race, differing from the classic model of Kenkenes.  The forehead retreated, the nose was long, low, slightly depressed at the end; the mouth, thick-lipped; the eye, narrow and almond-shaped; the cheek-bones, high; the complexion, dark brown.  Still, the great ripeness of lip, aggressive whiteness of teeth and brilliance of eye made his face pleasant.  He wore a shenti of yellow, over it a kamis of white linen, a kerchief bound with a yellow cord about his head, and white sandals.