'Because,' she answered; and the response seemed sufficient when mixed with her bright smile.

   'It runs thus,' she resumed with severity, 'in the only language

    you

   can partially understand——

   'It runs thus,' she reiterated, and I could not help saying under such breath as I had left, 'Been running a long time now.'

   She frowned and read—

    '

     I, Theodolitê, daughter of a race that has never been run out, did to the magician Jambres, whose skill was even as the skill of the gods, those things which as you have not yet heard I shall now proceed to relate to you.

    '

     Of him, I say, was I jealous, for that he loved a maiden inferior—Oh how inferior!—to me in charms, wit, beauty, intellect, stature, girth, and ancestry. Therefore, being well assured of this, I made the man into a mummy, ere ever his living spirit had left him. What arts I used to this last purpose it boots not, nor do I choose to tell. When I had done this thing I put him secretly away in a fitting box, even as Set concealed Osiris. Then came my maidens and tidied him away, as is the wont of these accursed ones. From that hour, even until now, has no man nor woman known where to find him, even Jambres the magician. For though the mummifying, as thou shalt not fail to discover, was in some sort incomplete, yet the tidying away and the losing were so complete that no putting forth of precious papyri into cupboards beneath flights of stairs has ever equalled it.

    '

     Now, therefore, shall I curse these maidens, even in Amenti, the place of their tormenting.

    '

     Forget them, may they be eternally forgotten.

    '

     Curse them up and down through the whole solar system.

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