“Bakenkhonsu talks too much, whatever he may think,” I exclaimed testily.

“The aged grow garrulous.  You were at the crowning to-day, were you not?”

“Yes, and if I saw aright from far away, those Hebrew prophets seemed to worst you at your own trade there, Kherheb, which must grieve you, as you were grieved in the temple when Amon fell.”

“It does not grieve me, Ana.  If I have powers, there may be others who have greater powers, as I learned in the temple of Amon.  Why therefore should I feel ashamed?”

“Powers!” I replied with a laugh, for the strings of my mind seemed torn that night, “would not craft be a better word?  How do you turn a stick into a snake, a thing which is impossible to man?”

“Craft might be a better word, since craft means knowledge as well as trickery.  ‘Impossible to man!’ After what you saw a while ago in the temple of Amon, do you hold that there is anything impossible to man or woman?  Perhaps you could do as much yourself.”

“Why do you mock me, Ki?  I study books, not snake-charming.”

He looked at me in his calm fashion, as though he were reading, not my face, but the thoughts behind it.  Then he looked at the cedar wand in his hand and gave it to me, saying: 

“Study this, Ana, and tell me, what is it.”

“Am I a child,” I answered angrily, “that I should not know a priest’s rod when I see one?”

“I think that you are something of a child, Ana,” he murmured, all the while keeping those eyes of his fixed upon my face.

Then a horror came about.  For the rod began to twist in my hand and when I stared at it, lo! it was a long, yellow snake which I held by the tail.  I threw the reptile down with a scream, for it was turning its head as though to strike me, and there in the dust it twisted and writhed away from me and towards Ki.  Yet an instant later it was only a stick of yellow cedar-wood, though between me and Ki there was a snake’s track in the sand.

“It is somewhat shameless of you, Ana,” said Ki, as he lifted the wand, “to reproach me with trickery while you yourself try to confound a poor juggler with such arts as these.”

Then I know not what I said to him, save the end of it was that I supposed he would tell me next that I could fill a hall with darkness at noonday and cover a multitude with terror.

“Let us have done with jests,” he said, “though these are well enough in their place.  Will you take this rod again and point it to the moon?  You refuse and you do well, for neither you nor I can cover up her face.  Ana, because you are wise in your way and consort with one who is wiser, and were present in the temple when the statue of Amon was shattered by a certain witch who matched her strength against mine and conquered me, I, the great magician, have come to ask you—­whence came that darkness in the hall to-day?”

“From God, I think,” I answered in an awed whisper.