Wisdom's Daughter: The Life and Love Story of She-Who-Must-be-Obeyed
need when already those names are written on the tablets of Heaven? Let them be until Fate finds them, since I would not have you in your rage stain your hands with their vile blood. But what would you with me, King?"

"You know well," he answered thickly. "I worship you. I am mad with love of you. When I saw you standing by the broken mast and making prayer, even then upon the edge of doom, my heart melted for you. I say that there is a raging fire in my breast that only you…"

I motioned to him to remain seated and answered, "I remember, King, that you spoke in this same fashion before the storm and that, half in jest, I wrote certain terms upon which I would become your queen, namely, when you could give me rule over all the earth. Wisely, perhaps, to these terms you would not set your seal; indeed you asked me why you should not take me to be your toy, and to that question an answer came to you last night when the ship wallowed water-logged and on her lee you saw the billows spouting on the rocks of Carmel. Also the goddess has told me more of what would chance to you should you dare to lift a hand against her priestess. I tell you that it is horrible, so horrible that I spare you, since if you heard it, you would tremble. What need to talk…When the roll was signed Tenes would have taken it, but I answered,
"Nay, on that day when its conditions are fulfilled it shall be yours. But till then it is mine."
Still I promised to give him a copy of the writing, and with this he was, or feigned to be, content.
When Philo had gone Tenes asked me how he was to become ruler of the world and thus to win me.
I answered that I would tell him later in Sidon after I had thought and prayed. But one thing he must swear, namely, to listen to no counsels save my own, since otherwise he might lose me and with me all. He did so by his gods, being at that time so bemused that he would have sworn anything if thereby he might keep near to me.
Moreover, he told me that it was his purpose to set me in a palace near his own, or perchance in a part of his own, that there he might visit me daily and learn my counsels.
I bowed my head and said, the more often the better, so long as he came for counsel and no more. Then I dismissed him and he went like any slave.
When he had gone once more I summoned Philo and, "under the wings of the goddess," that is, under an oath of secrecy to break which is death, I told him, my brother-in-Isis, the meaning of this play, namely that I would be avenged upon Tenes who had affronted me and the goddess, who also, in his cowardice, had proposed to sacrifice me in the deep, an offering to his false divinities.
Moreover, I gave him that copy of the writing 
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