“But that is all I would have thee remember,” she whispered so softly that her voice hardly sounded above the murmur of the flower, which some stray current of air began gently to fan. “If I am fair it is because Isis hath made me so in order that thou shouldst love me! I am young, and I have waited for thee all these years because, although I knew it not, I wished that my beauty should gladden thine eyes. Nay! at first I longed for thy love out of sheer pride and revenge. Dost remember the iridescent scarabæus, which should have guarded thee from the peril of giving thy love to Neit-akrit? Sweet! ’twas I stole the scarabæus. I would not have thee turn coldly from me; thou hadst taken from me my crown and my throne; I wished to steal thy heart from thee, and then to break it in wanton cruelty, and I threw the charmed scarabæus into the lake.… Then thou didst speak to me… I looked into thine eyes… I knew thy soul was mine… but… I guessed even then, my sweet, that Isis had made me doubly fair, had placed radiance over my body and my soul, for that day I learnt… that I loved thee!”
“Neit-akrit, for pity’s sake,” he pleaded.
But her arms were round his neck, her sweet face quite close to his, her eyes looked ardently into his own.
“I love thee!” she whispered.
“Wouldst make me mad, Neit-akrit?”
“I love thee!”
And far, very far away, the sacred heralds of Osiris rang out upon their golden trumpets the announcement that the sun-god was emerging behind the hills of Kamt, which hid the valley of death.
“I love thee, oh thou who art beloved of all the gods!”
Hugh had clasped her in his arms, and as I closed my burning eyes and fell back fainting in my prison, I knew that he was safe, that Neit-akrit had succeeded in making him forget.