“Man,” she broke in, striking her hand upon the table by which she stood, “do you understand that while you muse and moralise your crown is passing from you?”

“It has already passed, Lady.  Did you not see me give it to Amenmeses?”

“Do you understand that you who should be the greatest king in all the world, in some few hours if indeed you are allowed to live, will be nothing but a private citizen of Egypt, one at whom the very beggars may spit and take no harm?”

“Surely, Wife.  Moreover, there is little virtue in what I do, since on the whole I prefer that prospect and am willing to take the risk of being hurried from an evil world.  Hearken,” he added, with a change of tone and gesture.  “You think me a fool and a weakling; a dreamer also, you, the clear-eyed, hard-brained stateswoman who look to the glittering gain of the moment for which you are ready to pay in blood, and guess nothing of what lies beyond.  I am none of these things, except, perchance, the last.  I am only a man who strives to be just and to do right, as right seems to me, and if I dream, it is of good, not evil, as I understand good and evil.  You are sure that this dreaming of mine will lead me to worldly loss and shame.  Even of that I am not sure.  The thought comes to me that it may lead me to those very baubles on which you set your heart, but by a path strewn with spices and with flowers, not by one paved with the bones of men and reeking with their gore.  Crowns that are bought with the promise of blood and held with cruelty are apt to be lost in blood, Userti.”

She waved her hand.  “I pray you keep the rest, Seti, till I have more time to listen.  Moreover if I need prophecies, I think it better to turn to Ki and those who make them their life-study.  For me this is a day of deeds, not dreams, and since you refuse my help, and behave as a sick girl lost in fancies, I must see to myself.  As while you live I cannot reign alone or wage war in my own name only, I go to make terms with Amenmeses, who will pay me high for peace.”

“You go—­and do you return, Userti?”

She drew herself to her full height, looking very royal, and answered slowly: 

“I do not return.  I, the Princess of Egypt, cannot live as the wife of a common man who falls from a throne to set himself upon the earth, and smears his own brow with mud for a uraeus crown.  When your prophecies come true, Seti, and you crawl from your dust, then perhaps we may speak again.”

“Aye, Userti, but the question is, what shall we say?”

“Meanwhile,” she added, as she turned, “I leave you to your chosen counsellors—­yonder scribe, whom foolishness, not wisdom, has whitened before his time, and perchance the Hebrew sorceress, who can give you moonbeams to drink from those false lips of hers.  Farewell, Seti, once a prince and my husband.”

“Farewell, Userti, who, I fear, must still remain my sister.”