“My mother!”—­Nefert interrupted the angry Mohar.  “My mother did not choose my husband.  I saw him driving the chariot, and to me he resembled the Sun God, and he observed me, and looked at me, and his glance pierced deep into my heart like a spear; and when, at the festival of the king’s birthday, he spoke to me, it was just as if Hathor had thrown round me a web of sweet, sounding sunbeams.  And it was the same with Mena; he himself has told me so since I have been his wife.  For your sake my mother rejected his suit, but I grew pale and dull with longing for him, and he lost his bright spirit, and was so melancholy that the king remarked it, and asked what weighed on his heart—­for Rameses loves him as his own son.  Then Mena confessed to the Pharaoh that it was love that dimmed his eye and weakened his strong hand; and then the king himself courted me for his faithful servant, and my mother gave way, and we were made man and wife, and all the joys of the justified in the fields of Aalu

   [The fields of the blest, which were opened to glorified souls.  In
   the Book of the Dead it is shown that in them men linger, and sow
   and reap by cool waters.]

are shallow and feeble by the side of the bliss which we two have known—­not like mortal men, but like the celestial gods.”

Up to this point Nefert had fixed her large eyes on the sky, like a glorified soul; but now her gaze fell, and she said softly—­

“But the Cheta

   [An Aramaean race, according to Schrader’s excellent judgment.  At
   the time of our story the peoples of western Asia had allied
   themselves to them.]

disturbed our happiness, for the king took Mena with him to the war.  Fifteen times did the moon, rise upon our happiness, and then—­”

“And then the Gods heard my prayer, and accepted my offerings,” said Paaker, with a trembling voice, “and tore the robber of my joys from you, and scorched your heart and his with desire.  Do you think you can tell me anything I do not know?  Once again for fifteen days was Mena yours, and now he has not returned again from the war which is raging hotly in Asia.”

“But he will return,” cried the young wife.

“Or possibly not,” laughed Paaker.  “The Cheta, carry sharp weapons, and there are many vultures in Lebanon, who perhaps at this hour are tearing his flesh as he tore my heart.”

Nefert rose at these words, her sensitive spirit bruised as with stones thrown by a brutal hand, and attempted to leave her shady refuge to follow the princess into the house of the parascllites; but her feet refused to bear her, and she sank back trembling on her stone seat.  She tried to find words, but her tongue was powerless.  Her powers of resistance forsook her in her unutterable and soul-felt distress—­heart-wrung, forsaken and provoked.

A variety of painful sensations raised a hot vehement storm in her bosom, which checked her breath, and at last found relief in a passionate and convulsive weeping that shook her whole body.  She saw nothing more, she heard nothing more, she only shed tears and felt herself miserable.