“Certainly, certainly.  How could I disobey?  I observed them all last night, and have been working out the results till this moment; indeed, they are not yet finished.  Question and I will answer.”

“You will answer, yes, but what will you answer?  Not the truth, I fancy, because you are a coward, though if anyone can read the truth, it is you.  Man,” he added fiercely, “if you dare to lie to me I will cut your head off and take it to Pharaoh as a traitor’s; and your body shall lie, not in that fine tomb which you have made, but in the belly of a crocodile whence there is no resurrection.  Do you understand?  Then let us come to the point.  Look, the sun sets there behind the Tombs of Kings, where the departed Pharaohs of Egypt take their rest till the Day of Awakening.  It is a bad omen for me, I know, who wished to reach this city in the morning when Ra was in the House of Life, the East, and not in the House of Death, the West; but that accursed wind sent by Typhon, held me back and I could not.  Well, let us begin at the end which must come after all.  Tell me, you reader of the heavens, shall I sleep at last in that valley?”

“I think so, Prince; at least, so says your planet.  Look, yonder, it springs to life above you,” and he pointed to an orb that appeared at the topmost edge of the red glow of the sunset.

“You are keeping something back from me,” said Abi, searching Kaku’s face with his fierce eyes.  “Shall I sleep in the tomb of Pharaoh, in my own everlasting house that I shall have made ready to receive me?”

“Son of Ra, I cannot say,” answered the astrologer.  “Divine One, I will be frank with you.  Though you be wrath, yet will I tell you the truth as you command me.  An evil influence is at work in your House of Life.  Another star crosses and re-crosses your path, and though for a long time you seem to swallow it up, yet at the last it eclipses you—­it and one that goes with it.”

“What star?” asked Abi hoarsely, “Pharaoh’s?”

“Nay, Prince, the star of Amen.”

“Amen!  What Amen?”

“Amen the god, Prince, the mighty father of the gods.”

“Amen the god,” repeated Abi in an awed voice.  “How can a man fight against a god?”

“Say rather against two gods, for with the star of Amen goes the star of Hathor, Queen of Love.  Not for many periods of thousands of years have they been together, but now they draw near to each other, and so will remain for all your life.  Look,” and Kaku pointed to the Eastern horizon where a faint rosy glow still lingered reflected from the western sky.

As they watched this glow melted, and there in the pure heavens, lying just where it met the distant land, seeming to rest upon the land, indeed, appeared a bright and beautiful star, and so close to it that, to the eye, they almost touched, a twin star.  For a few minutes only were they seen; then they vanished beneath the line of the horizon.