She was pale and stern, and as I rose she
waved me back.

"'Has, then, the Prince--thy husband----' I stammered.

"'Speak not to me of the Prince, Rei, my servant,' she made answer.
'Yesterday I spoke to thee wildly, my mind was overwrought; let it be
forgotten--a wife am I, a happy wife'; and she smiled so strangely that
I shrunk back from her.

"'Now to my errand. I have dreamed a dream, a troublous dream, and thou
art wise and instructed, therefore I pray thee interpret my vision. I
slept and dreamed of a man, and in my dream I loved him more than I can
tell. For my heart beat to his heart, and in the light of him I lived,
and all my soul was his, and I knew that I loved him for ever. And
Pharaoh was my husband; but, in my dream, I loved him not. Now there
came a woman rising out of the sea, more beautiful than I, with a beauty
fairer and more changeful than the dawn upon the mountains; and she,
too, loved this godlike man, and he loved her. Then we strove together
for his love, matching beauty against beauty, and wit against wit, and
magic against magic. Now one conquered, and now the other; but in the
end the victory was mine, and I went arrayed as for a marriage-bed--and
I clasped a corpse.

"'I woke, and again I slept, and saw myself wearing another garb, and
speaking another tongue. Before me was the man I loved, and there, too,
was the woman, wrapped about with beauty, and I was changed, and yet
I was the very Meriamun thou seest. And once more we struggled for the
mastery and for this man's love, and in that day she conquered me.

"'I slept, and again I woke, and in another land than Khem--a strange
land, and yet methought I knew it from long ago. There I dwelt among the
graves, and dark faces were about me, and I wore That thou knowest for a
girdle. And the tombs of the rock wherein we dwelt were scored with the
writings of a dead tongue--the tongue of that land whence our fathers
came. We were all changed, yet the same, and once more the woman and I
struggled for the mastery, and though I seemed to conquer, yet a sea of
fire came over me, and I woke and I slept again.

"'Then confusion was piled upon confusion, nor can my memory hold all
that came to pass. For this game played itself afresh in lands, and
lives, and tongues without number. Only the last bout and the winner
were not revealed to me.

"'And in my dream I cried aloud to the protecting Gods to escape out of
the dream, and I sought for lig