“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?”

“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,