And there she took his face between her hands and kissed him.
"Hail! thou son of the murket!" she said.
"Having much, I am given more," he responded. "Behold the prodigality of good fortune. The Hathors exalt me in the world and add thereto a kiss from the Lady Senci."
"I was impelled truly," she confessed, "but by thine own face as well as by the Hathors. Kenkenes, if I did not know thee, I should say thou wast pretending—thou, to whom pretense is impossible."
He did not answer, for there was no desire in his heart to tell his secret; his experience with Hotep had warned him. Yet the unusual winsomeness of his father's noble love was hard to resist.
"Thy manner this evening betrays thee as striving to hide one spirit and show another," she continued, seeing he made no response.
"Thou hast said," he admitted at last; "and I have not succeeded. That is a sorry incapacity, for the world has small patience with a man who can not make his face lie."
"Bitter! Thou!" she chid.
"Have I not spoken truly?" he persisted.
"Aye, but why rebel? No man but hides a secret sorrow, and this would be a tearful world did every one weep when he felt like it."