“Within the month, Most Beauteous One! Give me but four short weeks and thou shalt see thyself as no one within the confines of the four iron pillars could ever hope to model thee. As to payment, I seek it not. Freedom might lead me away from thee!” Renny again passionately kissed the jeweled fingers of the little Princess and dashed from the Court. How he finally managed to reach his studio door, he never knew. Alas, for Renny and his promise. Even as he left the outer corridor, Bar, chief of his master’s spies, glided noiselessly from behind one of the great painted columns nearby. Thereafter, Menna the Overseer saw to it that Renny sped upon no more missions to the Palace. On the contrary he was sternly warned to keep within his master’s villa-garden, and the little workshop which had been provided for him. Yet, as luck would have it, in order to keep him busily occupied, Menna commanded him to model a statue of Hathor, Goddess of Beauty. This statue, when completed, Menna intended to present to the late Pharaoh’s shrine at Amada to the south. But to Renny he omitted to mention that _his_ name and his alone would appear upon its ivory pedestal! CHAPTER XV A STATUE OF HATHOR, GODDESS OF LOVE Menna the Overseer had little conception of the torture he had inflicted upon the mind of the youthful Renny when he forbade him his liberty. Hollow-cheeked and well nigh mad, Renny so far disobeyed his patron’s orders that he sat for hours, nay, for days at a time, huddled like a beggar at the Palace gate. Not even the gentle Bhanar could console him whenever, as so frequently happened, a day went by without its being possible for the distracted youth to catch a glimpse of his idol. Then, suddenly, he remembered his promise to the Princess. He sought out Khnum, the royal quarryman, who had but now moored to the western bank with a cargo consisting in the main of the precious alabaster of Hatnub. He bribed Khnum to procure him a giant block of purest alabaster, a mass of the creamiest material which the alabaster quarries could provide. For days did master-quarryman Khnum seek a block of the unusual proportions demanded by the impatient sculptor. A week went by, an eternity to the tortured artist. Finally, just as he was about to despatch a second expedition northward, and during the heat of one of the first days of the great sandstorm, Khnum and his sweating assistants hauled a wooden sledge before his dust-covered threshold. And there, high upon the friction-charred vehicle, stood the glossiest block of Hatnub’s finest alabaster which the distracted Renny had ever seen.