“Is there no other royal one whom she might take, Prince?”
“None. Moreover she wishes me alone.”
“Why, Prince?”
“Because of ancient custom which she worships. Also because she knows me well and in her fashion is fond of me, whom she believes to be a gentle-minded dreamer that she can rule. Lastly, because I am the lawful heir to the Crown and without me to share it, she thinks that she would never be safe upon the Throne, especially if I should marry some other woman, of whom she would be jealous. It is the Throne she desires and would wed, not the Prince Seti, her half-brother, whom she takes with it to be in name her husband, as Pharaoh commands that she should do. Love plays no part in Userti’s breast, Ana, which makes her the more dangerous, since what she seeks with a cold heart of policy, that she will surely find.”
“Then it would seem, Prince, that the cage is built about you. After all it is a very splendid cage and made of gold.”
“Yes, Ana, yet not one in which I would live. Still, except by death how can I escape from the threefold chain of the will of Pharaoh, of Egypt, and of Userti? Oh!” he went on in a new voice, one that had in it both sorrow and passion, “this is a matter in which I would have chosen for myself who in all others must be a servant. And I may not choose!”
“Is there perchance some other lady, Prince?”
“None! By Hathor, none—at least I think not. Yet I would have been free to search for such a one and take her when I found her, if she were but a fishergirl.”
“The Kings of Egypt can have large households, Prince.”
“I know it. Are there not still scores whom I should call aunt and uncle? I think that my grandsire, Rameses, blessed Egypt with quite three hundred children, and in so doing in a way was wise, since thus he might be sure that, while the world endures, in it will flow some of the blood that once was his.”