The Mummy and Miss Nitocris | Page 7

throb in your veins when I touch you?
Does your heart beat quicker when you come near me? Are your ears
keener for my voice than for that of any other woman--tell me?"
His hands went up and clasped hers as they lay on his shoulders. He
took her right hand and pressed it to his heart, and laid her left hand on
his cheek. Then he let them fall. He stepped back, bowed his head, and
said:
"The Queen is answered!"
"Not the Queen, but the woman, Ma-Rim[=o]n, and as a woman loves
to be answered. And now the woman shall speak. Nefer is dead, yet is
not Nefer re-incarnated in another form, another man of another build,
but yet Nefer that was--and is beside me now?"
She whispered these words very softly and very distinctly, and as the
words came rippling out from between her half-smiling lips, she took
half a pace forward and looked up into his face.
"Not dead--Nefer--I!" he exclaimed, starting back. "Have not the
Paraschites done their work on his body? Is not his mummy even now
resting in the City of the Dead? How can it be? Surely, Nitocris, thou
art dreaming."
"And hast thou, a priest and sage, standing on the threshold of the Holy
Mysteries, hast thou not learned the law which tells thee how, with the
permission of the Divine Assessors, the souls of the dead may come
back from the halls of Amenti to do their bidding in other mortal
shapes? And what if they should have ordained that his soul should

have thus returned?
"Thou, who art so like him that while he was yet alive mortal eyes
could scarce distinguish the one from the other. May it not be that the
gods, who foresee all things, made thee in the same image, perchance
to this very end?"
"No, the riddle is too deep for me, even as that other riddle which I read
in thy eyes, O Queen!"
"Let thy love help thee to read it, then!" she replied, coming to him and
putting her hands on his shoulders again. "Tell me now, Ma-Rim[=o]n,
what wouldst thou do if thy soul were now waiting in the land of Aalu
and the soul of Nefer was listening to me with thine ears, and looking
at me with thine eyes?"
"And if thou----"
"Yes, and if I too believed that this were so?"
He saw the sweet, red, smiling lips coming nearer to him, and felt the
soft breath on his bare throat. He saw the deep eyes melting into
tenderness as the moonlight shone upon them, and in the pale olive
cheeks a faint flush swiftly deepened.
"Nefer or Ma-Rim[=o]n, I am mortal," he said, swiftly catching her
wrists and drawing her towards him. "I am flesh and blood. I am man,
and thou art woman--and I love thee! I love thee! Ah, how sweet thy
kisses are! Now let the gods bless or curse, for never could they take
away what thou hast given--and for it I will give thee all. All that has
been, and is, and might have been! Priest and sage, Initiate of the
Mysteries, what are they to me now! O Nitocris, my queen and my love!
Sooner would I live through one year of bliss with thee than an eternity
in the Peace of the Gods itself!"
The words of blasphemy came hot and fast between his kisses, and she
heard them unresisting in his arms, giving him back kiss for kiss, and
looking into his eyes under the dark lashes which half-hid hers; and so

Ma-Rim[=o]n, the youthful Initiate of the Holy Mysteries, became in
that moment a man, and so he began to learn the long lesson which
teaches to what heights and depths a woman who has loved and hated
can rise and fall for the sake of her love and her hate.
"And now, my Nefer," she went on, throwing her clinging arms round
his neck again, "now, good-night! Go and dream of me as I will dream
of thee, and remember that, though mortals may plan, the gods decide.
We may try to paint the picture, but the outline is drawn by their hands
and may not be changed by ours. But, so far as this matter is concerned,
I swear by the Veil of Isis, by these sacred kisses of ours, and by the
Uraeus Crown of the Three Kingdoms, that, rather than be sold as a
priceless chattel to grace the triumph of Menkau-Ra, I will give myself,
as others did in the old days, to be the bride of Father Nile. Remember
that, and remember, too, that, whatever the outward seeming of things
may be, I am thine and thou art mine, as it was, and