"It seems so to thee."
"Cursed! Cursed!" cried Kama, weeping. "Ye all say that it seems to me. But the day before yesterday some criminal hand threw into my bedchamber a veil, which I wore half a day before I saw that it was not mine and that I had never worn a veil like it."
"Where is that veil?" inquired the prince, now alarmed.
"I burned it, but I showed it first to my servants."
"If not thine even, what harm could come of it?"
"Nothing yet. But had I kept that rag in the house two days longer, I should have been poisoned, or caught some incurable disorder. I know Asiatics and their methods."
Wearied and irritated, the prince left her at the earliest, in spite of entreaties to stay. When he asked the servants about that veil, the tirewoman declared that it was not one of Kama's; some person had thrown it into the chamber.
The prince commanded to double the watch at the villa and around it, and returned in desperation to his dwelling.
"Never should I have believed," said he, "that a single weak woman could bring so much trouble. Four freshly caught hyenas are not so restless as that Kama!"
At his palace the prince found Tutmosis, who had just returned from
Memphis and had barely taken time to bathe and dress after the journey.