"Strange, and it happened strangely. The Prince's father, the divine
Rameses, had willed the marriage. The Prince hated it no less than
Meriamun, but the will of a father is the will of the Gods. In one sport
the divine Prince excelled, in the Game of Pieces, an old game in Khem.
It is no pastime for women, but even at this Meriamun was determined
to master her brother. She bade me carve her a new set of the pieces
fashioned with the heads of cats, and shaped from the hard wood of
Azebi.[*] I carved them with my own hands, and night by night she played
with me, who have some name for skill at the sport.

[*] Cyprus.

"One sunset it chanced that her brother came in from hunting the lion in
the Libyan hills. He was in an evil humour, for he had found no lions,
and he caused the huntsmen to be stretched out, and beaten with rods.
Then he called for wine, and drank deep at the Palace gate, and the
deeper he drank the darker grew his humour.

"He was going to his own Court in the Palace, striking with a whip at
his hounds, when he chanced to turn and see Meriamun. She was sitting
where those three great palm-trees are, and was playing at pieces with
me in the cool of the day. There she sat in the shadow, clad in white
and purple, and with the red gold of the snake of royalty in the
blackness of her hair. There she sat as beautiful as the Hathor, the
Queen of Love; or as the Lady Isis when she played at pieces in Amenti
with the ancient King. Nay, an old man may say it, there never was
but one woman more fair than Meriamun, if a woman she be, she whom our
people call the _Strange Hathor_."