Her eyes searching the gloom fell first upon the dark-robed figure of Asti sleeping in a chair, her head resting upon her hand.

Then a brightness drew them to the foot of her bed, and there, clothed in a faint, white light, that seemed as though it were drawn from the stars and the moon, wearing the Double Crown, and arrayed in all the royal robes of Egypt, she saw--_herself_.
Now Tua knew that she dreamed, and for a long while lay still, for it pleased her, starved and wretched as she was, a prisoner in the hands of her foes, a netted bird, to let her fancy dwell upon this splendid image of what she had been before an evil fate, speaking with the voice of Merytra, Lady of the Footstool, had beguiled dead Pharaoh to Memphis.

If things had gone well with her, she should be as that image was to-day, that image which wore her crown and robes of state, yes, and her very jewels.

Such were the changes of fortune even in the lives of princes whose throne seemed to be set upon a rock, princes whom the god of gods had fathered.

Never before in her young life had the thing come so home to her, for until now, even through the hunger and the fear, her pride had borne her up.