ly wait till a feast day to wear the jewel that is your own, while
my treasure is no more mine than a pearl that I see gleaming at the
bottom of the sea."

"Thou canst love!" exclaimed Nefert with joyful excitement. "Oh! I thank
Hathor that at last she has touched thy heart. The daughter of Rameses
need not even send for the diver to fetch the jewel out of the sea; at a
sign from her the pearl will rise of itself, and lie on the sand at her
slender feet."

Bent-Anat smiled and kissed Nefert's brow.

"How it excites you," she said, "and stirs your heart and tongue! If two
strings are tuned in harmony, and one is struck, the other sounds, my
music master tells me. I believe you would listen to me till morning if I
only talked to you about my love. But it was not for that that we came
out on the balcony. Now listen! I am as lonely as you, I love less
happily than you, the House of Seti threatens me with evil times--and yet
I can preserve my full confidence in life and my joy in existence. How
can you explain this?"

"We are so very different," said Nefert.

"True," replied Bent-Anat, "but we are both young, both women, and both
wish to do right. My mother died, and I have had no one to guide me, for
I who for the most part need some one to lead me can already command, and
be obeyed. You had a mother to bring you up, who, when you were still a
child, was proud of her pretty little daughter, and let her--as it became
her so well-dream and play, without warning her against the dangerous
propensity. Then Mena courted you. You love him truly, and in four long
years he has been with you but a month or two; your mother remained with
you, and you hardly observed that she was managing your own house for
you, and took all the trouble of the household. You had a great pastime
of your own--your thoughts of Mena, and scope for a thousand dreams in
your distant love. I know it, Nefert; all that you have seen and heard
and felt in these twenty months has centred in him and him alone. Nor is
it wrong in itself. The rose tree here, which clings to my balcony,
delights us both; but if the gardener did not frequently prune it and tie
it with palm-bast, in this soil, which forces everything to rapid growth,
it would soon shoot up so high that it would cover door and window, and I
should sit in darkness. Throw this handkerchief over your shoulders, for
the dew falls as it grows cooler, and listen to me a little longer!--The
beautiful pass