"You are He! You are He!" she whispered, with joyous terror.
"No, Dio, I am only His shadow," he answered, calmly and rationally. "But if His shadow suffers such agony, what will His suffering be?"
Suddenly he raised his eyes to the sky and jumped up.
"He is coming!" he cried in a voice so changed and with his face so altered, that she thought he would fall down in a fit. But she, too, looked at the sky and understood.
A gigantic, pyramid shaped ray, with its base on the ground and its apex in the zenith, flashed in the greyish sky of the morning, above the dying glow of the city fire, and the white opalescent lightnings of zodiacal light danced and quivered in it.
"Quick! Quick!" he repeated, trembling like those tremulous lights in the heavens.
They both made haste as though they were indeed meeting the Unexpected One.
Blowing up the embers on the altar the king put on them splinters of sandalwood and cannacat. Lighting a long golden censer, shaped like an outstretched hand, Dio gave it to the king and herself took a cithern—a brass hoop, threaded with fine silver snakes that gave a high ringing sound. Both stood before the altar facing each other:
"I come to glorify Thy rays, living Aton, one and eternal God!" he intoned, and it seemed to her that his voice drowned the roaring laughter of the hell let loose.
"Praise be to the living Aton, who didst create the heavens and the secrets thereof! Thou art in the sky and Thy beloved son, Akhnaton, is on earth!" she replied.