The girl raised herself with a slowness that showed how weak and spent she was; she unknit her fingers from those of the King, and rose and stood before him.
“Father,” she said, “the promise you ask holds more of torture for my woman’s soul than you with your man’s nature can know, yet I defy your will no longer. I give you promise to wed Tothmes the Second.”
The King, with a mighty effort, raised himself to a sitting posture, his face was pinched and ghastly pale, his eyes gleamed with an unnatural light as he gasped, “Down upon your knees, girl, and repeat slowly and distinctly, that I may miss no word, the ‘oath prayer.’ Quick! girl, quick!”
She knelt at his bidding and slowly and quietly said these words:
“O Thou Beneficent One!
“Protector of life!
“Thou to whom we flee for succor, when earth’s tempests lower, or when death draws near.
“To Thee, Great Principal, our Sun, our Moon, our Star.
“To Thee, the guide of all who pass into the realms of shade, I call. Elder brother, Thou who having once been man and endured like us life’s temptations. Thou knowest our infirmities, and can therefore with divine compassion forgive our proneness to err.
“O, Osirus, Thou that shall judge us at the last day, and with infinite tenderness, shield us from Seth and his geni, when they strive to prove before the great tribunal, the unfitness of a world soul, for the realms of bliss.