“If she only knew how he loves Neit-akrit!”
“Thou dost him wrong, oh, mighty Pharaoh!” I retorted. “The beloved of the gods will plight his troth to Queen Maat-kha. And he never breaks his word.”
The invalid laughed his nasty, sarcastic laugh, and muttered several times to himself:
“If she only knew how he loves Neit-akrit… she would suffer… ay! and I think I would make him suffer, too.”
Late in the evening, at last, he dropped into a troubled sleep; and I, feeling momentary peace and freedom, went out upon the terrace. The Pharaoh’s palace faced the temple of Isis, behind which lay the mysterious garden with the lonely snow-white pavilion, and the sacred nook, beside the cataract, with beyond it the palace of the royal bride.
The night was exquisitely still, the moon was not yet up, and the shadows were not as yet very dark. It was a perfect evening, and my thoughts flew out across the poetic garden to the lonely spot where, in the midst of this picturesque and pagan land, an Englishman was preparing to sacrifice his happiness for the sake of his honour. An infinite sadness crept over me: I longed for dear old England and for peace, and above all I longed for sight of Hugh before the awful, the irrevocable had actually happened. Somehow I could not believe that the preposterous thing was really about to be accomplished; that, within the next few hours, a man so good, so true as Hugh Tankerville could be called upon to wreck his whole life without a protest. We were obviously doomed to remain in this exotic land for the whole term of our natural lives. I was willing enough to remain: I had no ties, save those which bound me to my friend, and if Hugh could but marry the woman he loved, I know he would have craved for nothing more. But we were among people as high-minded and more civilised than ourselves: a woman here was as sacred, as much worthy of respect, as in our own distant homes, and conscience has an unhappy knack of following one wherever one may go. All this I knew and felt; and now, at the eleventh hour, I, too, in my inmost heart began to argue with my conscience, to bandy words with my friend’s honour, and to try and find a loophole through which I could drag Hugh Tankerville away from the very foot of the hymeneal altar.
The longing to speak to Hugh, if only for a moment, became imperative. I was not sure whether I should find the way open through the temple gardens to his pavilion, but at any rate I resolved to try. Wrapping a dark cloak round me, I found my way out of the Pharaoh’s palace, and soon reached the outer precincts of the temple close.
The sacred edifice, in its severely imposing architecture, with massive columns, such as the Egyptians love, towered high above me, square and broad, upon a gigantic flight of marble steps. Hugh and I had visited it the day before, and I loved its simple magnificence, its gorgeous proportions, its great snow-white columns, the exquisite tracery, picked out in silver inlay, which gleamed in the gathering shadows of evening, looking singularly ethereal and ghostlike.
The evening sacrifice was just over, for I heard behind the temple the sound of sistrum and harp, dying away in the distance; and the song of Isis’s sacred courtesans, as they took possession of their enchanted gardens, sounded more and more remote. From the gardens an overpowering scent of flowers was wafted towards me, and I could see on my right the pavilion where Hugh probably at this moment was pacing up and down the marble hall like some caged lion, nestling behind a clump of orange trees: and far beyond, the canals, like shimmering ribbons, wound in graceful curves towards Tanis and Net-amen, Men-ne-fer and Het-se-fent.
I had already turned towards the pavilion and was following a long path, which led away from the temple, when my ear caught the sound of stealthy footsteps upon the sandy walk, some distance behind me. Astonished, I turned to see who my companion was in this evening stroll, and to my amazement recognised my patient, the mighty Pharaoh, who, like myself, wrapped in a dark cloak, was softly walking at right angles from the path which I myself was following, straight towards the temple, and the next moment had disappeared from my view behind a piece of sculpture.