“And on what pretext did she reject your suit?” asked the widow.

“Pretext!” cried Ani.  “Bent-Anat and pretext!  It must be owned that she has kingly pride, and not Ma—­[The Goddess of Truth]—­herself is more truthful than she.  That I should have to confess it!  When I think of her, our plots seem to me unutterably pitiful.  My veins contain, indeed, many drops of the blood of Thotmes, and though the experience of life has taught me to stoop low, still the stooping hurts me.  I have never known the happy feeling of satisfaction with my lot and my work; for I have always had a greater position than I could fill, and constantly done less than I ought to have done.  In order not to look always resentful, I always wear a smile.  I have nothing left of the face I was born with but the mere skin, and always wear a mask.  I serve him whose master I believe I ought to be by birth; I hate Rameses, who, sincerely or no, calls me his brother; and while I stand as if I were the bulwark of his authority I am diligently undermining it.  My whole existence is a lie.”

“But it will be truth,” cried Katuti, “as soon as the Gods allow you to be—­as you are—­the real king of this country.”

“Strange!” said Ani smiling, Ameni, this very day, used almost exactly the same words.  The wisdom of priests, and that of women, have much in common, and they fight with the same weapons.  You use words instead of swords, traps instead of lances, and you cast not our bodies, but our souls, into irons.”

“Do you blame or praise us for it?” said the widow.  “We are in any case not impotent allies, and therefore, it seems to me, desirable ones.”

Indeed you are,” said Ani smiling.  “Not a tear is shed in the land, whether it is shed for joy or for sorrow, for which in the first instance a priest or a woman is not responsible.  Seriously, Katuti—­in nine great events out of ten you women have a hand in the game.  You gave the first impulse to all that is plotting here, and I will confess to you that, regardless of all consequences, I should in a few hours have given up my pretensions to the throne, if that woman Bent-Anat had said ‘yes’ instead of ‘no.’”

“You make me believe,” said Katuti, “that the weaker sex are gifted with stronger wills than the nobler.  In marrying us you style us, ’the mistress of the house,’ and if the elders of the citizens grow infirm, in this country it is not the sons but the daughters that must be their mainstay.  But we women have our weaknesses, and chief of these is curiosity.—­May I ask on what ground Bent-Anat dismissed you?”