"Mayhap he is ready to surrender her now."
"Not so!" the princess put in. "He hath endured eight months. If it
were eight hundred years his silence would be the same. It is proof of
my boast that he loves her. No man who would comfort his flesh alone
would suffer such lengths of mortification of flesh! Let him go, my
King, and give the clean-souled fan-bearer another Israelite for his
daughter."
"Why camest thou not sooner with this to the king?" Har-hat demanded.
"I have but this moment learned of it, and I could not leave the court
without one last act for the good of the oppressed," she replied.
"Have it thy way, Ta-user. Come to me in an hour," Meneptah began.
"Nay, write it now."
"Thou art insistent."
"Thou didst promise," she whispered, her face so close to his that the
light from the facets of her emeralds turned on his cheek.
He took up his pen and wrote.
"Now promise that the signet shall go back to Mentu," she continued.
"As thou wilt, Ta-user," the king replied.
She caught up the roll, hesitated for a moment, and then kissed his
cheek deliberately and was gone.
A moment later Har-hat overtook her in the hall.
"Hyena!" he exclaimed. "What is thy game?"
She laughed and shook the scroll in his face.
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