n by a brutal hand, and attempted to leave her shady refuge to
follow the princess into the house of the parascllites; but her feet
refused to bear her, and she sank back trembling on her stone seat.
She tried to find words, but her tongue was powerless. Her powers
of resistance forsook her in her unutterable and soul-felt
distress--heart-wrung, forsaken and provoked.

A variety of painful sensations raised a hot vehement storm in
her bosom, which checked her breath, and at last found relief in a
passionate and convulsive weeping that shook her whole body. She saw
nothing more, she heard nothing more, she only shed tears and felt
herself miserable.

Paaker stood over her in silence.

There are trees in the tropics, on which white blossoms hang close by
the withered fruit, there are days when the pale moon shows itself near
the clear bright sun;--and it is given to the soul of man to feel love
and hatred, both at the same time, and to direct both to the same end.

Nefert's tears fell as dew, her sobs as manna on the soul of Paaker,
which hungered and thirsted for revenge. Her pain was joy to him, and
yet the sight of her beauty filled him with passion, his gaze lingered
spell-bound on her graceful form; he would have given all the bliss of
heaven once, only once, to hold her in his arms--once, only once, to
hear a word of love from her lips.

After some minutes Nefert's tears grew less violent. With a weary,
almost indifferent gaze she looked at the Mohar, still standing before
her, and said in a soft tone of entreaty:

'My tongue is parched, fetch me a little water."

"The princess may come out at any moment," replied Paaker.

"But I am fainting," said Nefert, and began again to cry gently.

Paaker shrugged his shoulders, and went farther into the valley, which
he knew as well as his father's house; for in it was the tomb of his
mother's ancestors, in which, as a boy, he had put up prayers at every
full and new moon, and laid gifts on the altar.

The hut of the paraschites was prohibited to him, but he knew that
scarcely a hundred paces from the spot where Nefert was sitting, lived
an old woman of evil repute, in whose hole in the rock he could not fail
to find a drink of water.

He hastened forward, half intoxicated with had seen and felt within the
last few minutes.

The door, which at night closed the cave against the intrusions of the
plunder-seeking jackals, was wide open, and the old woman sat outsid