Meranes stooped to her, strained her form to his, kissed her lips and throat and bosom. “Pearl of the Deep—Pearl closed in my hand! Long have we loved!”
“Long—long.”
“Out of me were you drawn.”
“Out of you.”
“The sun and the earth—the ocean and the river—”
“The sun and the earth—the ocean and the river—”
“Aryenis—Aryenis!”
“Smite Egypt and return!—The Egyptian here! Will you visit her, Meranes, before you go—her son and her?”
She drew upon sorceress-power, and before he left the room of the fountain won from him his word that he would leave in the shadow that Egyptian.... It seemed that Nitetis had as well be returned to Egypt whence she had been bought!
But the next day a slave won way to Meranes, fell before him, then, being bidden to speak, gave a manner of sorceress-message from Nitetis. At first said the satrap, “I do not go,” then, when the eunuch was backing from the room, recalled him. “I may come, I may not come. Say only that.”... That same day, finding an hour with naught of moment set against it, he went to that part of the seraglio given to the Egyptian. He found Nitetis prone upon cushions, her body wrapped in stuff thin and dark as the air of night, her blue-black hair dishevelled. In the distance Smerdis played with a ball.