Then the Pharaoh cried: "Hence! I bid you. Hence, and to-morrow shall
your people be laden with a double burden and their backs shall be red
with stripes. I will not let the people go!"

Then the two men cried aloud, and pointing upward with their staffs they
vanished from the hall, and none dared to lay hands on them, but those
who sat at the feast murmured much.

Now the Wanderer marvelled why Pharaoh did not command the Guards to cut
down these unbidden guests, who spoiled his festival. The Queen Meriamun
saw the wonder in his eyes and turned to him.

"Know thou, Eperitus," she said, "that great plagues have come of late
on this land of ours--plagues of lice and frogs and flies and darkness,
and the changing of pure waters to blood. And these things our Lord
the Pharaoh deems have been brought upon us by the curse of yonder
magicians, conjurers and priests among certain slaves who work in the
land at the building of our cities. But I know well that the curses come
on us from Hathor, the Lady of Love, because of that woman who hath set
herself up here in Tanis, and is worshipped as the Hathor."

"Why then, O Queen," said the Wanderer, "is this false Goddess suffered
to abide in your fair city? for, as I know well, the immortal Gods
are ever angered with those who turn from their worship to bow before
strange altars."

"Why is she suffered? Nay, ask of Pharaoh my Lord. Methinks it is
because her beauty is more than the beauty of women, so the men say who
have looked on it, but I have not seen it, for only those men see it who