room,
from which a similar one opened on the right and left. The one on
the left was as dark as the central one; but a flickering light stole
through numerous chinks of the one on the right. The tent was one of
those with a flat roof, divided into three apartments, which he had
often seen, and the woman who irresistibly attracted him was doubtless
in the lighted one.

To avoid exposing himself to fresh suspicion, he must conquer his timid
delay, and he had already stooped and loosed the loop which fastened
the curtain to the hook in the floor, when the door of the lighted room
opened and a woman's figure entered the dark central chamber.

Was it she?

Should he venture to speak to her? Yes, it must be done.

Panting for breath and clenching his hands, he summoned up his courage
as if he were about to steal unbidden into the most sacred sanctuary of
a temple. Then he pushed the curtain aside, and the woman whom he had
just noticed greeted him with a low cry.

But he speedily regained his composure, for a ray of light had fallen on
her face, revealing that the person who stood before him was not Kasana,
but her nurse, who had accompanied her to the prisoners and then to the
camp. She, too, recognized him and stared at him as though he had risen
from the grave.

They were old acquaintances; for when he was first brought to the
archer's house she had prepared his bath and moistened his wound with
balsam, and during his second stay beneath the same roof, she had
joined her mistress in nursing him. They had chatted away many an hour
together, and he knew that she was kindly disposed toward him; for when
midway between waking and sleeping, in his burning fever, her hand
had stroked him with maternal tenderness, and afterwards she had never
wearied of questioning him about his people and at last had acknowledged
that she was descended from the Syrians, who were allied to the Hebrews.
Nay, even his language was not wholly strange to her; for she had been
a woman of twenty when dragged to Egypt with other prisoners of Rameses
the Great. Ephraim, she was fond of saying, reminded her of her own son
when he was still younger.

The youth had no ill to fear from her, so grasping her hand, he
whispered that he had escaped from his guards and come to ask counsel
from her mistress and herself.

The word "escaped" was sufficient to satisfy the old woman; for her
idea of ghosts was that they put others to flight, but did not fly