"The hair could not have passed right through his body," she thought, looking at the King's image, and she recalled the prophecy: "the kingdom of God shall come when the two shall be one, and male shall be female and there shall be neither male nor female."
She knelt down and stretched out her arms to the marvel of godlike charm.
"My brother, my sister, the two horned moon, the double-edged axe, my lover, my loved one!" she whispered devoutly.
A whiff of wind came from the window; the flame of the lamp flickered, the outline of the figure grew dim and through the marvel the monster peered—neither old nor young, neither man nor woman, a eunuch, a decrepit babe, the horror of Gem-Aton.
"Go to him then, the seducer, the son of perdition, the devil," the voice of Ptamose sounded over her and she buried her face in her hands, terrified.
At the same moment she felt that someone was standing behind her; she turned round and saw a little girl.
A robe, transparent like running water, fell in flowing folds over the slender body. The over-dress had come open in front and the amber-brown skin could be seen through the shift worn underneath. The girl wore on her head a huge shiny black wig of tightly plaited tresses cut evenly round the edge. A tiny talc cup, turned upside down and filled with the kemi ointment made up of seven perfumes—the royal ointment—was fixed on the top of the head. Slowly melting with the warmth of the body it dropped like fragrant dew on the hair, face and clothes. The long stem of a pink lotos was thrust through a hole in the cup in such a way that the half-open flower, with a sweet smell of anise, hung over the forehead.
The girl was about twelve years old. The childish face was charming though irregular, with a protruding mouth and a receding forehead; the large slightly squinting eyes had a fixed heavy look such as one sees in the eyes of an epileptic.
At one moment she seemed a child, at another a woman; there was something pathetic and charming in this elusive twilight between childhood and womanhood. She was a half-open bud like the rosy lotos nekheb over her forehead, fragrant with the freshness of water; it closes its petals and shortens its stem at night as it hides under the water and when, in the morning, it comes up again and opens its chalice, a golden winged beetle flies out of it—Horus, the newly-born god of the Sun.
The little girl appeared so suddenly, so like a phantom that Dio looked at her almost in fear. Both were silent for a second.