"You will kill me if you don't leave me," the king said, and again he bent down and, putting both arms round Mahu's head, looked into his eyes with entreaty.
Mahu said afterwards that in another minute he would have broken down, lost his reason and gone, leaving the king behind. But Akhnaton had pity on him.
"You cannot?" he whispered as though lost in thought, looking at Mahu so that his heart again melted like wax. "Well, there is nothing for it then, let us go!"
They went from the cabin on to the deck. The king stepped into a litter. The soldiers lifted it and carried him to the palace.
IV
Dio woke up, opened her eyes and saw that the dull gold of the palm leaves on the capitals was turning silver in the bluish light of the morning, while the flickering flame of the night-light still threw a reddish reflection on the pale green, pointed leaves at the bottom of the columns; in the middle, where the disc of the god Aton was spreading its hand-shaped rays over the royal couple, the two lights merged in one.
Dio lay on a panther skin spread on the floor between two beds; the queen slept in one, but the king's bed was empty. Dio raised her head and looked at the sleeper: she slept quietly, breathed evenly; only at times the fine brows twitched like a butterfly's antennae and the wrinkle between them grew deeper, as though she were thinking hard even in her sleep; the pale face with the black shadow of the long lashes was beautiful in spite of the ravages wrought by disease.
Dio looked at the queen and it seemed to her it was he and not she: the sister-wife was strikingly like her brother-husband, especially in sleep.