"Hateful to me!" she cried reproachfully.
"Nay? No more then. I have spoken the last with thee concerning my love. And thus I seal the pact."
He drew her, unresisting, to him, and kissed her forehead.
"For my gentleness to the Hebrews of Pa-Ramesu," he continued in a calmer tone as he released her, "they have stripped me of my rank and sent me to govern Masaarah. So they thought to punish me, never dreaming that they joined me to Rachel, and hid me away in a nook with a handful to whom I may be merciful and none will spy upon me! They thwarted their end."
"Happy Masaarah!" Rachel said earnestly.
Atsu laughed again and disappeared in the dark.
Rachel drew her hand furtively across the place on her brow that the taskmaster's lips had touched. The keen eyes of the old Israelite saw the motion and understood it.
"It is not Atsu," she said astutely.
"Nay," the girl protested, "and yet it is Atsu, in mine own meaning, or any one in Egypt who is fair to Israel. The grace of that one would be sufficient in God's sight to save all Egypt from doom. That was my meaning."
The light in the frame quarters of the taskmaster was extinguished and at that moment a shadowy figure emerged from the dark and approached the pair.