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."

Then he watched her go, and turning to me, said:

"To-day, Ana, I have lost both a crown and a wife, yet strange to tell
I do not know which of these calamities grieves me least. Yet it is time
that fortune turned. Or mayhap all the evils are not done. Would you
not go also, Ana? Although she gibes at you in her anger, the Princess
thinks well of you, and would keep you in her service. Remember, whoever
falls in Egypt, she will be great till the last."

"Oh! Prince," I answered, "have I not borne enough to-day that you
must add insult to my load, you with whom I broke the cup and swore the
oath?"

"What!" he laughed. "Is there one in Egy