“Cease your gibes, and say what you have to say,” said Merapi, in the same broken voice.
He made no answer, but only looked at the tree behind which the nurse and child had vanished.
“Oh! I know, I know,” she exclaimed in tones that were like a cry. “My child is threatened! You threaten my child because you hate me.”
“Your pardon, Lady. It is true that evil threatens this royal babe, or so I understood from Jabez, who knows so much. But it is not I that threaten it, any more than I hate you, in whom I acknowledge a fellow of my craft, but one greater than myself that it is my duty to obey.”
“Have done! Why do you torment me?”
“Can the priests of the Moon-goddess torment Isis, Mother of Magic, with their prayers and offerings? And can I who would make a prayer and an offering——”
“What prayer, and what offering?”
“The prayer that you will suffer me to shelter in this house from the many dangers that threaten me at the hands of Pharaoh and the prophets of your people, and an offering of such help as I can give by my arts and knowledge against blacker dangers which threaten—another.”
Here once more he gazed at the trunk of the tree beyond which I heard the infant wail.
“If I consent, what then?” she asked, hoarsely.