So, while Babylonia led her maidens to a market, while
Ethiopia ruled hers with a rod, while Arabia numbered hers among her
she-camels, Egypt gloried in national chivalry and spiritual love.
This was the sentiment of the nation, by the lips of Khu-n-Aten, the
artist king:
"Sweet love fills my heart for the queen; may she ever keep the hand of
the Pharaoh."
Whatever Egypt's mode of worshiping Khem and Isis, nothing could set at
naught this clean, impulsive, sincere avowal.
Here, then, openly and in perfect propriety was a woman abroad with her
suitor.
She might have been eighteen years old, but there was nothing girlish
in her gorgeous beauty. She was a red rose, full-blown.
Her robes were a double thickness of loose-meshed white linen, with a
delicate stripe of scarlet; her head-dress a single swathing of scarlet
gauze. She wore not one, but many kinds of jewels, and her anklets and
armlets tinkled with fringes of cats and hawks in carnelian. Her hair
was brilliant black and unbraided. Her complexion was transparent, and
the underlying red showed deeply in the small, full-lipped mouth; like
a stain in the cheeks; like a flush on the brow, and even faintly on
the dainty chin.
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