Then Rames turned to Tua and said:

"Pharaoh sleeps, but in your hand is the sceptre. Slay me, O Queen!"

Now Tua, who all this while had watched like one frozen into stone,
seemed to thaw to life again. Her danger was past. She could never be
forced to wed that coarse, black-souled Nubian, for Rames had killed
him. Yonder he lay dead in all his finery with his hideous giants about
him like fallen trees, and oh! in her rebellious human heart she blessed
Rames for the deed.

But as she, who was trained in statecraft, knew well enough, if he had
escaped the sword of Prince Amathel, it was but to fall into a peril
from which there seemed to be no escape. This dead prince was the heir
of a great king, of a king so great that for a century Egypt had dared
to make no war upon his country, for it was far away, well-fortified and
hard to come at across deserts and through savage tribes. Moreover, the
man had been slain at a feast in Pharaoh's Court, and by an officer of
Pharaoh's guard, which afterwards had killed his escort under the eyes
of Egypt's monarchs, the hand of one of whom he sought in marriage. Such
a deed must mean a bitter war for Egypt, and to those who struck the
blow--death, as Rames himself knew well.

Tua looked at him kneeling before her, and her heart ached. Fiercely,
despairingly she thought, throwing her soul afar to seek out wisdom and
a way of escape for Rames. Presently in the blackness of her mind there
arose a plan and, as ever was her fashion, she acted swiftly. Lifting
her head she commanded that the doors should be locked and guarded so
that none might go in or out, and that those physicians who were amongst