Stretching on with that long untiring stride, he was aware of a solitary horseman wandering aimlessly towards him, and riding at a foot's pace. For all ages it has been a true saying, that he whom one meets in the desert must be friend or foe. Sarchedon bore down on the other, and halting in front of him, discovered, to his great surprise, that it was Sethos.
The cup-bearer, who accompanied Ninyas on his fictitious lion-hunt outside the walls, had taken the earliest opportunity of leaving his young prince, when the latter rode back at sundown to the city. Impressed by the vague warning of Beladon, he had followed as far as he could the advice it accompanied, and turned his horse's head towards the desert, as directed by his friend.
But it was not in the nature of Sethos to persevere for any length of time in a course requiring sustained energy or self-denial. The fatigue of the long ride before him soon suggested itself painfully to his mind. Babylon with all her charms allured him irresistibly, now that he had really turned his back on her temptations; Kalmim's dark eyes seemed to plead with his own inclinations against an abandonment of courtly life, an exchange of luxury and pleasure for hardship and privation.
It was not long before he guided his willing horse back towards the city, and so, pacing leisurely through the cool night air, came against his friend, galloping in fiery haste on his errand of life and death.
"Have you seen them?" exclaimed Sarchedon, pale, fierce, and breathless. "Shall I catch them? How long have they gone past?"
"Seen what?" asked Sethos in turn, marvelling at the other's disturbed looks and wild imploring eyes.
In a hoarse whisper, in the low quick accents of a desperate man, Sarchedon briefly described the party of which he was in pursuit.
"If it was daylight, they would be in sight even, now," replied the other; and was entering into a long description of the dromedary's extraordinary speed and powers, which he had not failed to observe, although the little band had passed him at a pace which forbade his identifying those who composed it, when Sarchedon, giving his bridle-reins a shake, went away again in more furious haste than before, neither wishing him farewell, nor thanking him for tidings that seemed so welcome and yet so sad.
"A woman," thought Sethos, nodding sagely, and thinking he would be back with Kalmim by to-morrow's dawn—"a woman must needs be the cause of all this turmoil. Surely there is wormwood with the honey, and a two-edged sword in the scabbard of velvet and gold."
But when did such pithy saws ever preserve a man from foolish deeds? Or where is the armour of proof to fence his heart from a pair of soft eyes, the mantle of wisdom that is not shrivelled to shreds in the breath of a burning sigh? Sethos rode steadily back to Babylon, and Sarchedon galloped on into the desert, like a falcon stooping for its prey.