At length, controlling herself with an effort, Asti answered:
"Perchance, Lord, the Great Lady your wife, or the ladies your
companions, will buy if you do not."
"Have I not already told you, Merchant," asked Rames angrily, "that I
have no wife, and no companions that are not men?"
"You said so, Sir," she replied humbly, always speaking in her feigned
voice, "yet forgive us if we believed you not, since in our journeyings
my daughter and I have seen many princes, and know that such a thing is
contrary to their nature. Still we will show you our wares, for surely
all the men in Napata are not unmarried."
Then, without more ado, she drew out a box of scented cedar and, opening
it, revealed a diadem of pearls worked into the shape of the royal
_uraeus_, which they had fashioned thus at Tat, and also a few of their
largest single gems.
"Beautiful, indeed," said Rames, looking at them, "though there is but
one who has the right to wear this crown, the divine Queen of the Upper
and the Lower Land," and he sighed.
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