fear. This house is hospitable."

VI

Tahoser, encouraged by the friendly words of Poeri, abandoned her
supplicating attitude and rose. A rich glow flushed her cheek but now so
pale; shame came back to her with hope; she blushed at the strange
action to which love had driven her; she hesitated to pass the threshold
which she had crossed so often in her dreams. Her maidenly scruples,
stifled for a time by passion, resumed their power in the presence of
reality.

The young man, thinking that timidity, the companion of misfortune,
alone prevented Tahoser from entering the house, said to her in a soft,
musical voice marked by a foreign accent,--

"Enter, maiden, and do not tremble so. My home is large enough to
shelter you. If you are weary, rest; if you are thirsty, my servants
will bring you pure water cooled in porous clay-jars; if you are hungry,
they will set before you wheaten bread, dates, and dried figs."

Petamounoph's daughter, encouraged by these hospitable words, entered
the house, which justified the hieroglyph of welcome inscribed upon the
gate.

Poeri took her to a room on the ground-floor, the walls of which were
painted with green vertical bands ending in lotus flowers, making the
apartment pleasant to the eye. A fine mat of reeds woven in symmetrical
designs covered the floor. At each corner of the room great sheaves of
flowers filled tall vases, held in place by pedestals, and scattered
their perfume through the cool shade of the hall. At the back a low
sofa, the wood-work of which was ornamented with foliage and chimerical
animals, tempted with its broad bed the fatigued or idle guest. Two
chairs, the seats made of Nile reeds, with sloping back, strengthened by
stays, a wooden foot-stool cut in the shape of a shell and resting upon
three legs, an oblong table, also three-legged, bordered with inlaid
work and ornamented in the centre with uraeus snakes, wreaths, and
agricultural symbols, and on which was placed a vase of rose and blue
lotus,--completed the furniture of the room, which was pastoral in its
simplicity and gracefulness.

Poeri sat down on the sofa. Tahoser, bending one leg under her thigh
and raising one knee, knelt before the young man who fixed upon her a
glance full of kindly questioning. She was most lovely in that attitude.
The gauze veil in which she was enveloped exhibited, as it fell back,
the rich mass of her hair bound with a narrow white ribbon, and revealed
her ge