“How you are talking!” said Uarda.  “Do you not honor your father, and the Gods?  I love no one else as I do you—­and what I felt when you kissed me—­that was not like moon-light, but like this hot mid-day sun.  When I thought of you I had no peace.  I will confess to you now, that twenty times I looked out of the door, and asked whether my preserver—­the kind, curly-headed boy—­would really come again, or whether he despised a poor girl like me?  You came, and I am so happy, and I could enjoy myself with you to my heart’s content.  Be kind again—­or I will pull your hair!”

“You!” cried Rameri.  “You cannot hurt with your little hands, though you can with your tongue.  Pentaur is much wiser and better than I, you owe much to him, and nevertheless I—­”

“Let that rest,” interrupted the girl, growing grave.  “He is not a man like other men.  If he asked to kiss me, I should crumble into dust, as ashes dried in the sun crumble if you touch them with a finger, and I should be as much afraid of his lips as of a lion’s.  Though you may laugh at it, I shall always believe that he is one of the Immortals.  His own father told me that a great wonder was shown to him the very day after his birth.  Old Hekt has often sent me to the gardener with a message to enquire after his son, and though the man is rough he is kind.  At first he was not friendly, but when he saw how much I liked his flowers he grew fond of me, and set me to work to tie wreaths and bunches, and to carry them to his customers.  As we sat together, laying the flowers side by side, he constantly told me something about his son, and his beauty and goodness and wisdom.  When he was quite a little boy he could write poems, and he learned to read before any one had shown him how.  The high-priest Ameni heard of it and took him to the House of Seti, and there he improved, to the astonishment of the gardener; not long ago I went through the garden with the old man.  He talked of Pentaur as usual, and then stood still before a noble shrub with broad leaves, and said, My son is like this plant, which has grown up close to me, and I know not how.  I laid the seed in the soil, with others that I bought over there in Thebes; no one knows where it came from, and yet it is my own.  It certainly is not a native of Egypt; and is not Pentaur as high above me and his mother and his brothers, as this shrub is above the other flowers?  We are all small and bony, and he is tall and slim; our skin is dark and his is rosy; our speech is hoarse, his as sweet as a song.  I believe he is a child of the Gods that the Immortals have laid in my homely house.  Who knows their decrees?’ And then I often saw Pentaur at the festivals, and asked myself which of the other priests of the temple came near him in height and dignity?  I took him for a God, and when I saw him who saved my life overcome a whole mob with superhuman strength must I not regard him as a superior Being?  I look up to him as to one of them; but I could never look in his eyes as I do in yours.  It would not make my blood flow faster, it would freeze it in my veins.  How can I say what I mean! my soul looks straight out, and it finds you; but to find him it must look up to the heavens.  You are a fresh rose-garland with which I crown myself—­he is a sacred persea-tree before which I bow.”