“For one who does not know, you have many reasons and all of them different, O instructed Ki,” said Seti.

Then he paused, walking up and down the portico, and I who knew his mind guessed that he was wondering whether he would do well to suffer Ki, whom at times he feared because his objects were secret and never changed, to abide in his house, or whether he should send him away.  Ki also shivered a little, as though he felt the shadow cold, and descended from the portico into the bright sunshine.  Here he held out his hand and a great moth dropped from the roof and lit upon it, whereon it lifted it to his lips, which moved as though he were talking to the insect.

“What shall I do?” muttered Seti, as he passed me.

“I do not altogether like his company, nor, I think, does the lady Merapi, but he is an ill man to offend, Prince,” I answered.  “Look, he is talking with his familiar.”

Seti returned to his place, and shaking off the moth which seemed loth to leave him, for twice it settled on his head, Ki came back into the shadow.

“Where is the use of your putting questions to me, Ki, when, according to your own showing, already you know the answer that I will give?  What answer shall I give?” asked the Prince.

“That painted creature which sat upon my hand just now, seemed to whisper to me that you would say, O Prince, ’Stay, Ki, and be my faithful servant, and use any little lore you have to shield my house from ill.’”

Then Seti laughed in his careless fashion, and replied: 

“Have your way, since it is a rule that none of the royal blood of Egypt may refuse hospitality to those who seek it, having been their friends, and I will not quote against your moth what a bat whispered in my ears last night.  Nay, none of your salutations revealed to you by insects or by the future,” and he gave him his hand to kiss.

When Ki was gone, I said: 

“I told you that night-haunting thing was his familiar.”

“Then you told me folly, Ana.  The knowledge that Ki has he does not get from moths or beetles.  Yet now that it is too late I wish that I had asked the lady Merapi what her will was in this matter.  You should have thought of that, Ana, instead of suffering your mind to be led astray by an insect sitting on his hand, which is just what he meant that you should do.  Well, in punishment, day by day it shall be your lot to look upon a man with a countenance like—­like what?”

“Like that which I saw upon the coffin of the good god, your divine father, Meneptah, as it was prepared for him during his life in the embalmer’s shop at Tanis,” I answered.

“Yes,” said the Prince, “a face smiling eternally at the Nothingness which is Life and Death, but in certain lights, with eyes of fire.”

On the following day, by her invitation, I walked with the lady Merapi in the garden, the head nurse following us, bearing the royal child in her arms.