"
"The Queen!" exclaimed Abi in a low voice, rolling his hollow eyes
around him as though in fear. "Oh, Kaku, would that I had never beheld
the Queen. I tell you that she is not a woman, as indeed you know well,
but a fiend with a heart of ice, and the venomous cunning of a snake. I
am called Pharaoh, yet am but her puppet to carry out her decrees. I am
called her husband, yet she is still no wife to me, or to any, although
all men love her, and by that love are ofttimes brought to doom. Last
night again she vanished from my side as I sat listening to her orders,
and after a while, lo! there she was as before, only, as it seemed to
me, somewhat weary. I asked her where she had been and she answered:
'Further than I could travel in a year to visit one she loved as much as
she hated me. Now who can that be, Kaku?'"
"Rames, I think, Lord, he who has made himself King of Kesh," replied
Kaku in an awed whisper. "Without a doubt she loved the man when she was
a woman, though whom she loves now the evil gods know alone.
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