When first you returned from the East, in yonder hall you told us of certain things that happened to you there.

Then the dwarf your servant took up the tale.

He said that he gave my name to the Great King.

I was wroth as well I might be, but even when I prayed that he should be scourged, you did not deny that it was he who gave my name to the King, although Pharaoh yonder said that if you had spoken the name it would have been another matter." "I had no time," I answered, "for just then the messengers came from Idernes and afterwards when I sought you you were gone." "Had you then no time," she asked coldly, "beneath the palms in the garden of the palace when we were affianced?
Oh! there was time in plenty but it did not please you to tell me that you had bought safety and great gifts at the price of the honour of the Lady of Egypt whose love you stole." "You do not understand!" I exclaimed wildly.
"Forgive me, Shabaka, but I understand very well indeed, since from your own words I learned at the feast given to Idernes that 'the name of Amada' slipped your lips by chance and thus came to the ears of the Great King." "The tale that Idernes and his captain told was false, Lady, and for it Bes and I took their lives with our own hands." "It had perhaps been better, Shabaka, if you had kept them living that they might confess that it was false.

But doubtless you thought them safer dead, since dead men cannot speak, and for this reason challenged them to single combat." I gasped and could not answer for my mind seemed to leave me, and she went on in a gentler voice, "I do not wish to speak angrily to you, my cousin Shabaka, especially when you have just wrought such great deeds for Egypt.