When she had wept till the creamy linen over her small face was wet and
her throat hurt under the strain of angry sobs, and until she was sure
that Rameses was gone, she picked herself up and went cautiously to the
end of the passage to reconnoiter.
The prince stood under the single lamp in the great corridor, between
her and the refuge of her chamber. Another was close to him, her hands
upon his shoulders.
Masanath retired into the dusk and waited. When she looked again the
hands were clasped about the prince's neck. Back into the shadows she
shrank, pressing her tiny palms together in a wild prayer for Ta-user's
triumph. After an interval she looked again in time to see Rameses
undo the arms about his knees and fling the princess from him. Cold
with dismay and shaking with her sudden descent from hope to despair,
Masanath watched him disappear into the dark.
"O most ill-timed, iron continence!" she wailed under her breath. But
the change which had come over Ta-user interested her immediately.
Fascinated, she forgot to hide again, but the light of the single lamp
did not penetrate to her position.
The princess kept the posture of abandoned humiliation, into which
Rameses had flung her, until the heir's footsteps died away up the
corridor.
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