At the Overseer’s repeated knocks the bolts were slowly drawn. Through the barely opened door Renny, blinded by the glare, gazed unseeingly toward the extended hand of his smiling patron:
“How now, Syrian? Hast turned magician? Bar tells me thou must needs have conned the hekau-spell that bringeth food and drink, since all the food that is brought thee stands untasted. Breath of the Goddess! Why hast sulked behind barred doors these weeks and more?” Menna made as if to step within.
“Ah, master, most noble lord, I do beseech thee, go not within! Bethink thee, Splendor of Thebes, when first I came to thee, thou didst assure to me that privacy which, far more than thy golden uten, I did ask of thee! Continue now thy favor some little time, I pray. Thy statue of the Goddess Hathor is...!”
“Amemet eat me! Days, nay weeks, have we waited for a sight of it! Now is our sore-tried patience at an end.”
With a firmness unexpected in the customarily indolent Menna, the Overseer pushed the trembling Renny aside and entered the workshop.
At first, so sudden was the change from the glare of noonday to the murky shadows of the room, that Menna could distinguish nothing. When at last his eyes grew somewhat accustomed to the gloom, he found himself staring at the tinted statue of a regally robed woman, a life-sized figure so startlingly realistic that for a moment he instinctively drew back.
Upon a pedestal festooned with drooping lotus and fragrant mimosa stood the smiling figure of the Princess Sesen. So lifelike did the statue appear to the bewildered noble, that for a space of a full minute, he waited, expecting her lips to part, her tongue to utter the customary greetings.
Once his jeweled fingers had assured him that the figure was but tinted stone, Menna burst into voluble exclamations of wonder and delight.
“Verily, said I not that thou hadst learned some potent charm, some mighty hekau, known but to the blessed gods alone?