Thus she had what she called her “silent hours” when she would suffer no one to come near her, not her ladies or her foster-mother, Asti herself, nor even Rames.  Then, followed by the women at a distance, she would wander among the great columns of the temple and study the sculptures on the walls; and, since all places were open to her, Pharaoh’s child, enter the sanctuaries, and stare at the gods that sat in them fashioned in granite and in alabaster.  This she would do even in the solemn moonlight when mortals were afraid to approach these sacred shrines, and come thence unconcerned and smiling.

“What do you see there, O Morning Star?” asked little Rames of her once.  “They are dull things, those stone gods that have never moved since the beginning of the world; also they frighten me, especially when Ra is set.”

“They are not dull, and they do not frighten me,” answered Tua; “they talk to me, and although I cannot understand all they say, I am happy with them.”

“Talk!” he said contemptuously, “how can stones talk?”

“I do not know.  I think it is their spirits that talk, telling me stories which happened before I was born and that shall happen after I am dead, yes, and after they seem to be dead.  Now be silent—­I say that they talk to me—­it is enough.”

“For me it would be more than enough,” said the boy, “but then I am not called Child of Amen, who only worship Menthu, God of War.”

When Rames was seven years of age, every morning he was taken to school in the temple, where the priests taught him to write with pens of reed upon tablets of wood, and told him more about the gods of Egypt than he ever wanted to hear again.  During these hours, except when she was being instructed by the great ladies of the Court, or by high-priestesses, Tua was left solitary, since by the command of Pharaoh no other children were allowed to play with her, perhaps because there were none in the temple of her age whose birth was noble.

Once when he came back from his school in the evening Rames asked her if she had not been lonely without him.  She answered, No, as she had another companion.

“Who is it?” he asked jealously.  “Show me and I will fight him.”

“No one that you can see, Rames,” she replied.  “Only my own Ka.”

“Your Ka!  I have heard of Kas, but I never saw one.  What is it like?”

“Just like me, except that it throws no shadow, and only comes when I am quite by myself, and then, although I hear it often, I see it rarely, for it is mixed up with the light.”

“I don’t believe in Kas,” exclaimed Rames scornfully, “you make them up out of your head.”