The World's Desire

Even out of this night of dread the morning rose, and with it came Rei, bearing a message from the King. But he did not find the Wanderer in his chamber. The Palace eunuchs said...

“The Divine Pharaoh Rameses died and was gathered to Osiris. With these hands I closed his coffin and set him in his splendid tomb, where he shall rest unharmed for ever till th...

When Meriamun the Queen had watched the chariot of the Wanderer till it was lost in the dust of the desert, she passed down from the Palace roof to the solitude of her chamber.

Morning broke in the East. A new day dawned upon the silent sea, and on the world of light and sound. The sunrise topped the hill at last, and fell upon the golden raiment of th...

The feast dragged slowly on, for Fear was of the company. The men and women were silent, and when they drank, it was as if one had poured a little oil on a dying fire. Life flam...

Now the host of Pharaoh marched forth from On, to do battle with the Nine-bow barbarians. And before the host marched, the Captains came to the Wanderer, according to the comman...

“Slay him!” cried the foes within, speaking in many tongues. “Slay him!” they cried, and yet they feared the task, but circled round like hounds about a mighty boar at bay.

The clamour swelled or sank, and the men called or cried the names of many women, some dead, some lost. Others were mute, silent in the presence of the World’s Desire, silent as...

Rei departed, wondering and heavy at heart, and Meriamun the Queen passed into her bed-chamber, and there she bade the eunuchs suffer none to enter, made fast the doors, and thr...

It was nightfall, and Pharaoh sat at meat and Meriamun sat by him. The heart of Pharaoh was very heavy. He thought of that great army which now washed to and fro on the waters o...

“Swift as a bird or a thought,” says the old harper of the Northern Sea. The Wanderer’s thoughts in the morning were swift as night birds, flying back and brooding over the thin...

Rei, the Priest of Amen, the Master Builder, began his story unwillingly enough, and slowly, but soon he took pleasure in telling it as old men do, and in sharing the burden of...

The Wanderer and Pharaoh’s Queen stood face to face in the twilight of the chamber. They stood in silence, while bitter anger and burning shame poured into his heart and shone f...

Presently, as she walked, Meriamun saw Rei the Priest and the veiled woman at his side, and she saw on the woman’s breast a red jewel that burnt and glowed like a heart of fire....

That night the Wanderer saw not Meriamun, but on the morrow she sent a messenger to him, bidding him to her feast that night. He had little heart to go, but a Queen’s courtesy i...

The torn web fell—the last veil of the Strange Hathor. It fell, and all its unravelled threads of glittering gold and scarlet rippled and coiled about the Wanderer’s feet, and a...

“These things are not without the Gods,” said the Wanderer, who was called Eperitus, when he had heard all the tale of Rei the Priest, son of Pames, the Head Architect, the Comm...

At midday on the morrow Pharaoh and the host of Pharaoh marched in pomp from Tanis, taking the road that runs across the desert country towards the Red Sea of Weeds, the way tha...

Across the wide backs of the waves, beneath the mountains, and between the islands, a ship came stealing from the dark into the dusk, and from the dusk into the dawn. The ship h...

A hard fight it had been and a long, and the Wanderer was weary. He took the tiller of the ship in his hand, and steered for the South and for the noonday sun, which was now at...

Rei the Priest saw and heard. Then turning, he stole away through the maddened throng of women and fled with what speed he might from the Temple. His heart was filled with fear...

Rei the Priest had fled with what speed he might from the Gates of Death, those gates that guarded the loveliness of Helen and opened only upon men doomed to die. The old man wa...

There was silence without at last; the clamour and the tread of the Apura were hushed in the distance, dying far away, and Rei grew calm, when he heard no longer the wild song,...

The fragrant night was clear and still, the silence scarce broken by the lapping of the waves, as the Wanderer went down from his fallen home to the city on the sea, walking war...

Now Rei the Priest, as had been appointed, went to the pylon gate of the Temple of Hathor. Awhile he stood looking for the Wanderer, but though the hour had come, the Wanderer c...

Pharaoh slept heavily in his place, for he was wearied with grief and toil. But Meriamun passed into the chamber, and standing at the foot of the golden bed, lifted up her hands...

Strange news flies fast. It was not long before the Pharaoh, who then was with his Court in Tanis, the newly rebuilded city, heard how there had come to Khem a man like a god, w...

The period in which the story of _The World’s Desire_ is cast, was a period when, as Miss Braddon remarks of the age of the Plantagenets, “anything might happen.” Recent discove...