“The aged grow garrulous. You were at the crowning to-day, were you not?”
“Yes, and if I saw aright from far away, those Hebrew prophets seemed to worst you at your own trade there, Kherheb, which must grieve you, as you were grieved in the temple when Amon fell.”
“It does not grieve me, Ana. If I have powers, there may be others who have greater powers, as I learned in the temple of Amon. Why therefore should I feel ashamed?”
“Powers!” I replied with a laugh, for the strings of my mind seemed torn that night, “would not craft be a better word? How do you turn a stick into a snake, a thing which is impossible to man?”
“Craft might be a better word, since craft means knowledge as well as trickery. ‘Impossible to man!’ After what you saw a while ago in the temple of Amon, do you hold that there is anything impossible to man or woman? Perhaps you could do as much yourself.”
“Why do you mock me, Ki? I study books, not snake-charming.”
He looked at me in his calm fashion, as though he were reading, not my face, but the thoughts behind it. Then he looked at the cedar wand in his hand and gave it to me, saying:
“Study this, Ana, and tell me, what is it.”
“Am I a child,” I answered angrily, “that I should not know a priest’s rod when I see one?”
“I think that you are something of a child, Ana,” he murmured, all the while keeping those eyes of his fixed upon my face.