like the green leaf that I saw floating on the waters when we were
crossing the sea; anything so forlorn I never saw, abandoned by all it
belonged to or had ever loved, the sport of a strange element in which
nothing resembling itself ever grew or ever can grow."

Nefert kissed her forehead. "You have friends," she said, "who will never
abandon you."

"I know, I know!" said Uarda thoughtfully, "and yet I am alone--for the
first time really alone. In Thebes I have often looked after the wild
swans as they passed across the sky; one flies in front, then comes the
body of the wandering party, and very often, far behind, a solitary
straggler; and even this last one I do not call lonely, for he can still
see his brethren in front of him. But when the hunters have shot down all
the low-flying loiterers, and the last one has lost sight of the flock,
and knows that he never again can find them or follow them he is indeed
to be pitied. I am as unhappy as the abandoned bird, for I have lost
sight to-day of all that I belong to, and I am alone, and can never find
them again."

"You will be welcomed into some more noble house than that to which you
belong by birth," said Nefert, to comfort her.

Uarda's eyes flashed, and she said proudly, almost defiantly:

"My race is that of my mother, who was a daughter of no mean house; the
reason I turned back this morning and went into the smoke and fire again
after I had escaped once into the open air--what I went back for, because
I felt it was worth dying for, was my mother's legacy, which I had put
away with my holiday dress when I followed the wretched Nemu to his tent.
I threw myself into the jaws of death to save the jewel, but certainly
not because it is made of gold and precious stones--for I do not care to
be rich, and I want no better fare than a bit of bread and a few dates
and a cup of water--but because it has a name on it in strange
characters, and because I believe it will serve to discover the people
from whom my mother was carried off; and now I have lost the jewel, and
with it my identity and my hopes and happiness."

Uarda wept aloud; Nefert put her arm around her affectionately.

"Poor child!" she said, "was your treasure destroyed in the flames?"

"No, no," cried Uarda eagerly. "I snatched it out of my chest and held it
in my hand when Nebsecht took me in his arms, and I still had it in my
hand when I was lying safe on the ground outside the burning house, and
B