In his beauty-worship, Kenkenes was not narrow. He would not confine
it to glyptic art, nor indeed to art alone--all the uses of life might
be bettered by it. His appreciation of Khu-n-Aten's ambition had been
passive before, but when his own spirit experienced the same fire and
the same reproach, his sympathy became hearty partizanship.
His mind wandered back again to the ruin. How fiercely Egypt had
resented the schism of a Pharaoh, a demi-god, the Vicar of Osiris! The
words of Rachel came back to him like an inspiration:
"Thou hast nation-wide, nation-old, nation-defended prejudice to
overcome, and thou art but one, Kenkenes."
But one, indeed, and only a nobleman. Could he hope to change Egypt
when a king might not? Behold, how he was suffering for a single and
simple breach of the law. At the thought he paused and asked himself:
"Am I suffering for the sacrilege?"
The admission would entail a terrifying complexity.
If he were suffering punishment for the statue, what punishment had
been his for the sacrilegious execution of the Judgment of the Dead in
the tomb of Rameses II? What, other than the reclamation of the signet
by the Incomparable Pharaoh, even as Mentu had said? If the hypothesis
held, he had committed sacrilege, he had offended the gods, and might
not the accumulated penalty be--O unspeakable--the loss of Rachel?
On the other hand, if the signet were still in the tomb, Rameses had
not reclaimed it--Rameses had not been offended.
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