“Creep!” the scribe responded heartily, “never in my life have I so wanted to flee a royal audience.  When she had done, she turned and swept from the presence and no man lifted a finger to stay her.”

For a moment there was an expressive silence between the two young men.  At last Kenkenes broke it in a voice of intense admiration.

“What an intrepid spirit!  Small wonder that she did not heed the condemnation of the rabble at mid-day—­she who was fresh from a triumph over the Pharaoh!”

Hotep’s eyes widened warningly and he shook his head.

“Nay, hush me not, Hotep,” Kenkenes went on in a reckless whisper.  “I must say it.  Would to the gods I had been there to copy it in stone!”

“Hush! babbler!” the scribe exclaimed, his eyes twinkling nevertheless, “thine art will make an untimely mummy of thee yet.”

Kenkenes poured out his first glass of wine and set it down untasted.  The contemplated sacrilege in stone opposite Memphis confronted him.

“If Egypt’s lack of art does not kill me first,” he added in defense.

“Nay,” Hotep protested, “why wouldst thou perpetuate the affront to the Pharaoh?”

“Because it is history and a better delineation of the Israelitish character than all the wordy chronicles of the historians could depict,” was the spirited reply.

“But the ritual,” Hotep began, with the assurance of a man that feels he is armed with unanswerable argument.

“Sing me no song of the ritual,” Kenkenes broke in impatiently.  “The ritual offends mine ears—­my sight, my sense.  We have quarreled beyond any treaty-making—­ever.”

The other looked at him with amazement and much consternation.

“Art thou mad?” he exclaimed.

“Nay, but I am rebellious—­as rebellious as the Israelite, for I have already shaken my fist in the face of the sculptor’s canons.  And the time will come when the world will call my revolt just.  I would there were a chronicler, here, now, to write me down, since I would be remembered as the pioneer.  I shall win no justification, in these days, perhaps only persecution, but I would reap my reward of honor, though it be a thousand years in coming.”

“Thou hast a grudge against the conventional forms and the rules of the ritual?” Hotep asked, after a thoughtful silence.

“I have a distaste for the horrors it compels and am ignorant of their use,” Kenkenes answered stubbornly.

“Kenkenes,” the scribe began, “Law is a most inexorable thing.  It is the governor of the Infinite.  It is a tyrant, which, good or bad, can demand and enforce obedience to its fiats.  It is a capricious thing and it drags its vassal—­the whole created world—­after it in its mutations, or stamps the rebel into the dust while the time-serving obedient ones applaud.  So thou hast set up resistance against a thing greater than gods and men and I can not see thee undone.  I love thee, but I should be an untrue friend did I abet thee in thy lawlessness.  Submit gracefully and thy cause shall have an audience with Law some day—­if it have merit.”