The white curtains flapped like broken wings laying bare the small, worm-eaten, wooden figure of the god, blackened with the smoke of incense, polished with the kisses of the worshippers. A soldier seized it, and lifting it up, flung it upon the ground and trampled it underfoot. The god's body cracked like a crushed insect.
Yubra fell upon his face so as not to see.
Pentaur was dying happily. Some one gentle as the god whose name is Quiet-Heart was bending over him—he could not tell whether it was a boy who looked like a girl or a girl who looked like a boy. He wanted to ask 'Who are you?' when the kiss of eternity sealed his lips. And the dulcet chords played on:
"Death is now to me like sweetest myrrh,
Death is now to me like healing,
Death is now to me like refreshing rain,
Death is now to me like a home to an exile!"
VIII
When Dio had set out to see Ptamose the mutiny was just beginning beyond the river and all was quiet on this side.
Issachar was waiting for her by the Eastern Gates of the Apet-Oisit wall, where the deserted tomb-sanctuary of King Tutmose the Third lay in ruins. Stepping out of the litter and telling the bearers to wait for her at the gate, she went with Issachar into the half-destroyed porch of the sanctuary. Walking up to the wall, which was completely covered with bas-reliefs and mural paintings, he leaned his shoulder against it. A movable stone turned on its axis, revealing a dark narrow opening. They both squeezed themselves sideways through it and descended some steep steps cut in the thickness of the rock. Issachar walked in front of Dio down a slanting underground passage, carrying a torch.
It was close: the depths of the earth warmed through by the eternal Egyptian sun, never cooled; the darkness was filled with warmth. "Glory be to thee who dwelleth in darkness, O Lord!" Dio remembered. It seemed to her that here the dead were as warm lying in their tombs in the bosom of the earth as a child in its mother's womb.