ther a
broken oath, and the loss for ever of the Heart's Desire. For to love
another woman, as he had been warned, was to lose Helen. But again, if
he scorned the Queen--nay, for all his hardihood he dared not tell her
that she was not the woman of his vision, the woman he came to seek. Yet
even now his cold courage and his cunning did not fail him.

"Lady," he said, "we both have dreamed. But if thou didst dream thou
wert my love, thou didst wake to find thyself the wife of Pharaoh. And
Pharaoh is my host and hath my oath."

"I woke to find myself the wife of Pharaoh," she echoed, wearily, and
her arms uncurled from his neck and she sank back on the couch. "I am
Pharaoh's wife in word, but not in deed. Pharaoh is nothing to me, thou
Wanderer--nought save a name."

"Yet is my oath much to me, Queen Meriamun--my oath and the hospitable
hearth," the Wanderer made answer. "I swore to Meneptah to hold thee
from all ill, and there's an end."

"And if Pharaoh comes back no more, what then Odysseus?"

"Then will we talk again. And now, Lady, thy safety calls me to visit
thy Guard." And without more words he rose and went.

The Queen looked after him.

"A strange man," she said in her heart, "who builds a barrier with his
oath betwixt himself and her he loves and has wandered so far to win!
Yet methinks I honour him the more. Pharaoh Meneptah, my husband, eat,
drink, and be merry, for this I promise thee--short shall be thy days."

V

THE CHAPEL PERILOUS

"Swift as a bird or a thought," says the old harper of the Northern Sea.
The Wanderer's thoughts in the morning were swift as night birds, flying
back and brooding over the things he had seen and the words he had heard
in the Queen's chamber. Again he stood between this woman and the oath
which, of all oaths, was the worst to break. And, indeed, he was little
tempted to break it, for though Meriamun was beautiful and wise, he
feared her love and he feared her magic art no less than he feared her
vengeance if she were scorned. Delay seemed the only course. Let him
wait till the King returned, and it would go hard but he found some
cause for leaving the city of Tanis, and seeking through new adventures
the World's Desire. The mysterious river lay yonder. He would ascend the
river of which so many tales were told. It flowed from the land of the
blameless _AEthiopians_, the most just of men, at whose tables the very
Gods sat as guests. There, perchance, far up the