al Gods
are ever angered with those who turn from their worship to bow before
strange altars."

"Why is she suffered? Nay, ask of Pharaoh my Lord. Methinks it is
because her beauty is more than the beauty of women, so the men say who
have looked on it, but I have not seen it, for only those men see it who
go to worship at her shrine, and then from afar. It is not meet that the
Queen of all the Lands should worship at the shrine of a strange woman,
come--like thyself, Eperitus--from none knows where: if indeed she be a
woman and not a fiend from the Under World. But if thou wouldest learn
more, ask my Lord the Pharaoh, for he knows the Shrine of the False
Hathor, and he knows who guard it, and what is it that bars the way."

Now the Wanderer turned to Pharaoh saying: "O Pharaoh, may I know the
truth of this mystery?"

Then Meneptah looked up, and there was doubt and trouble on his heavy
face.

"I will tell thee readily, thou Wanderer, for perchance such a man as
thou, who hast travelled in many lands and seen the faces of many Gods,
may understand the tale, and may help me. In the days of my father,
the holy Rameses Miamun, the keepers of the Temple of the Divine Hathor
awoke, and lo! in the Sanctuary of the temple was a woman in the garb
of the Aquaiusha, who was Beauty's self. But when they looked upon her,
none could tell the semblance of her beauty, for to one she seemed dark
and to the other fair, and to each man of them she showed a diverse
loveliness. She smiled upon them, and sang most sweetly, and love
entered their hearts, so that it seemed to each man that she only was
his Heart's Desire. But when any man would have come nearer and embraced
her, there was that about her which drove him back, and if he strove
again, behold, he fell down dead. So at last they subdued their hearts,
and desired her no more, but worshipped her as the Hathor come to earth,
and made offerings of food and drink to her, and prayers. So three
years passed, and at the end of the third year the keepers of the temple
looked and the Hathor was gone. Nothing remained of her but a memory.
Yet there were some who said that this memory was dearer than all else
that the world has to give.

"Twenty more seasons went by, and I sat upon the throne of my father,
and was Lord of the Double Crown. And, on a day, a messenger came
running and cried:

"'Now is Hathor come back to Khem, now is Hathor come back to Khem, and,
as of old, none may dra