“Speak on,” said Nefert.

“Speech does not suit me so well as action,” replied the princess; “but I believe I know what you need, and can help you.  You love your husband; duty calls him from you, and you feel lonely and neglected; that is quite natural.  But those whom I love, my father and my brothers, are also gone to the war; my mother is long since dead; the noble woman, whom the king left to be my companion, was laid low a few weeks since by sickness.  Look what a half-abandoned spot my house is!  Which is the lonelier do you think, you or I?”

“I,” said Nefert.  “For no one is so lonely as a wife parted from the husband her heart longs after.”

“But you trust Mena’s love for you?” asked Bent-Anat.

Nefert pressed her hand to her heart and nodded assent: 

“And he will return, and with him your happiness.”

“I hope so,” said Nefert softly.

“And he who hopes,” said Bent Anat, “possesses already the joys of the future.  Tell me, would you have changed places with the Gods so long as Mena was with you?  No!  Then you are most fortunate, for blissful memories—­the joys of the past—­are yours at any rate.  What is the present?  I speak of it, and it is no more.  Now, I ask you, what joys can I look forward to, and what certain happiness am I justified in hoping for?

“Thou dost not love any one,” replied Nefert.  “Thou dost follow thy own course, calm and undeviating as the moon above us.  The highest joys are unknown to thee, but for the same reason thou dost not know the bitterest pain.”

“What pain?” asked the princess.

“The torment of a heart consumed by the fires of Sechet,” replied Nefert.

The princess looked thoughtfully at the ground, then she turned her eyes eagerly on her friend.

“You are mistaken,” she said; “I know what love and longing are.  But you need only 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?”