“And when he passed with chains one thought darted through my mind. . . .”

“You determined, you dear, foolish, misguided child,” cried the old man, “to win the heart of the future king in order, through him, to release my son, your friend?”

The dying girl again smiled assent and softly exclaimed: 

“Yes, yes, I did it for that, for that alone.  And the prince was so abhorrent to me.  And the shame, the disgrace—­oh, how terrible it was!”

“And you incurred it for my son’s sake,” the old man interrupted, raising her hand, wet with his tears, to his lips; but she fixed her eyes on Ephraim, sobbing softly: 

“I thought of him too.  He is so young, and it is so horrible in the mines.”

She shuddered again as she spoke; but the youth covered her burning hand with kisses, while she gazed affectionately at him and the old man, adding in faltering accents: 

“Oh, all is well now, and if the gods grant him freedom. . . .”

Here Ephraim interrupted her to exclaim in fiery tones: 

“We are going to the mines this very day.  I and my comrades, and my grandfather with us, will put his guards to flight.”

“And he shall hear from my lips,” Nun added, “how faithfully Kasana loved him, and that his life will be too short to thank her for such a sacrifice.”

His voice failed him—­but every trace of suffering had vanished from the countenance of the dying girl, and for a long time she gazed heavenward silently with a happy look.  By degrees, however, her smooth brow contracted in an anxious frown, and she gasped in low tones: 

“Well, all is well . . . only one thing . . . my body . . . unembalmed . . . without the sacred amulets. . . .”

But the old man answered: 

“As soon as you have closed your eyes, I will give it, carefully wrapped, to the Phoenician captain now tarrying here, that he may deliver it to your father.”

Kasana tried to turn her head toward him to thank him with a loving glance, but she suddenly pressed both hands on her breast, crimson blood welled from her lips, her cheeks varied from livid white to fiery scarlet and, after a brief, painful convulsion, she sank back.  Death laid his hand on the loving heart, and her features gained the expression of a child whose mother has forgiven its fault and clasped it to her heart ere it fell asleep.

The old man, weeping, closed the dead girl’s eyes.  Ephraim, deeply moved, kissed the closed lids, and after a short silence Nun said: 

“I do not like to enquire about our fate beyond the grave, which Moses himself does not know; but whoever has lived so that his or her memory is tenderly cherished in the souls of loved ones, has, I think, done the utmost possible to secure a future existence.  We will remember this dead girl in our most sacred hours.  Let us do for her corpse what we promised, and then set forth to show the man for whom Kasana sacrificed what she most valued that we do not love him less than this Egyptian woman.”