To this day I remember that leather-seated chair.

The arms of it ended in ivory sphinxes and on its back of black wood in an oval was inlaid the name of the great Rameses, to whom indeed it had once belonged.

Dishes were handed to us--only two of them and those quite simple, for Seti was no great eater--by a young Nubian slave of a very merry face, and with them wine more delicious than any I had ever tasted.
We ate and drank and the Prince talked to me of my business as a scribe and of the making of tales, which seemed to interest him very much.
Indeed one might have thought that he was a pupil in the schools and I the teacher, so humbly and with such care did he weigh everything that I said about my art.

Of matters of state or of the dreadful scene of blood through which we had just passed he spoke no word.

At the end, however, after a little pause during which he held up a cup of alabaster as thin as an eggshell, studying the light playing through it on the rich red wine within, he said to me: "Friend Ana, we have passed a stirring hour together, the first perhaps of many, or mayhap the last.