She shook her head, making no answer, but he, loosing her from his arms, sank to his knees before her. He abased himself as a slave; he lifted the hem of her robe and kissed it, saying:
“Queen of my heart and rightful Queen of Egypt, I, Khian, worship you and do you homage. Whatever I have or may have, I set beneath your feet, acknowledging your Majesty. Henceforth I, your lover who hope to be your husband, am the humblest of your subjects.”
She bent down and raised him.
“Nay,” she said, smiling, when once more he stood upon his feet, “you are greater than I and it is the woman who serves the man, not the man the woman. Well, we will serve each other and thus be equal. But, Khian, what of Apepi who is your father?”
“I do not know,” he answered. “Yet, father or not, I pray that he may not try to come between us.”
“I pray so also, Khian. To-night is happy, never was there so happy a night; but to-morrow—oh! what of to-morrow?”
“It is in the Hands of God, Nefra, therefore let us fear nothing.”
“Aye, Khian, but often the paths of God are steep and rough, or so my father and my mother found. Like us they loved each other well, yet this Apepi was their doom. Come, we must go, for alas! all sweet things have their end.”
So once more they clung and kissed, and then hand in hand went down the darksome ways of that House of Death to the moonlit world without.
When they had climbed the steep ascent and were come to the mouth of the passage, Nefra stopped and by the light of the last lamp, for she had extinguished the others as they went, taught Khian how, by pressing a certain stone which swung upon a pivot, the place could be closed at will and, if need were, made fast from within by the aid of a bar and pins of granite, which the builders of the pyramid had used to shut out the curious while they went about their work upon the secret burial chambers at its heart. Also she showed him a great hanging door of granite that those who brought the Pharaoh to his burial a thousand years before had forgotten or neglected to let fall as they departed, leaving him to his eternal rest.