"Mayhap he is ready to surrender her now."
"Not so!" the princess put in. "He hath endured eight months. If it were eight hundred years his silence would be the same. It is proof of my boast that he loves her. No man who would comfort his flesh alone would suffer such lengths of mortification of flesh! Let him go, my King, and give the clean-souled fan-bearer another Israelite for his daughter."
"Why camest thou not sooner with this to the king?" Har-hat demanded.
"I have but this moment learned of it, and I could not leave the court without one last act for the good of the oppressed," she replied.
"Have it thy way, Ta-user. Come to me in an hour," Meneptah began.
"Nay, write it now."
"Thou art insistent."
"Thou didst promise," she whispered, her face so close to his that the light from the facets of her emeralds turned on his cheek.
He took up his pen and wrote.
"Now promise that the signet shall go back to Mentu," she continued.