“By all the gods of Kamt, I swear to thee that I am no enemy. But wilt pardon me if I do not give thee the kiss of friendship?”
“Why? A kiss is so soon given. It has so little meaning, for it is as swift as the flight of the bird through the air. Thou didst kiss me when thou camest, why wilt not kiss me now?”
“Because thou art beautiful above all things on earth,” he said very quietly, “and because in my dazed mind there is still a glimmer of reason, which the perfume of thy hair would quickly dispel.”
She blushed suddenly as if for the first time in her life she had been told that she was fair. How strange women are! When I told Neit-akrit that she was more beautiful than anything on earth, she smiled and looked pleased. When the Pharaoh fell half-fainting at her feet she became as white and rigid as a statue carved in stone. And now when Hugh Tankerville told her, with frigid calm, and I thought with a singular want of conviction, that she was beautiful, she suddenly became a thousand times more so, for she blushed and the heightened colour became her well.
“Farewell, then, oh, thou who art of the gods beloved!” she said once more very gently.
The next moment Hugh had gone and Neit-akrit had thrown herself on the couch in a passionate fit of weeping.
CHAPTER XX.
A LETTER FROM HUGH
Hugh went away that same day. He was going to Net-amen, together with the gorgeous retinue which had, as it were, sprung up round him and escorted him everywhere. Queen Maat-kha did not accompany him this time: she was unprepared for the journey, she said. She would proceed to Tanis alone, there to meet him for the wedding ceremony.
Hugh took a very brief farewell of me. I could see that he dared not trust himself to speak, and, even before me, he shrank from breaking down. I could not go with him, for my patient demanded my immediate attention. He was undoubtedly worse since this morning: the strong emotion had done him an infinity of harm. Yet I was torn between my affection for Hugh and my duty to the sick man. It seemed to me that Hugh needed my care as much as the sick Pharaoh. His sufferings were mental, but I felt that they were keen. And did I not love him as much as my prosy nature was capable of loving? and did I not know him, and his ardent, passionate nature, forcibly hardened by years of dry, scientific research, all the more ready to fall a prey to strong impressions, such as the strange and fascinating girl had undoubtedly made upon it?
Hugh had never been in love. During his early youth he had had no opportunity of meeting any woman who would appeal to his keen sense of the mystic and the picturesque. Such women are rare in Western Europe, and none had come across the recluse student’s path. Then, suddenly, Fate and his own choosing threw him into this land of mysticism and beauty, where the atmosphere was fragrant and intoxicating with the scent of exotic flowers, where the air was filled with the twitter of birds, busy in making their nests. And, framed by these picturesque surroundings, which in themselves palpitated with youth and with life, there was the poetic, mystic, yet intensely feminine vision of an exquisitely beautiful woman who was irresistibly drawn towards him, and with the artless impulse of her own untrammelled nature showed to his enthusiastic mind visions of ardent and reciprocated love, such as he had never dreamed of. What wonder if for the moment Hugh forgot?—forgot that he had pledged himself to another woman and only remembered when it was too late?