o Asia."

And you," interrupted Paaker, hardly and drily, "you broke your
bethrothal vows, and became the wife of the charioteer Mena. I know it
all; of what use is talking?"

"Because it grieves me that you should be angry, and your good mother
avoid our house. If only you could know what it is when love seizes one,
and one can no longer even think alone, but only near, and with, and in
the very arms of another; when one's beating heart throbs in one's very
temples, and even in one's dreams one sees nothing--but one only."

"And do I not know it?" cried Paaker, placing himself close before her
with his arms crossed. "Do I not know it? and you it was who taught me to
know it. When I thought of you, not blood, but burning fire, coursed in
my veins, and now you have filled them with poison; and here in this
breast, in which your image dwelt, as lovely as that of Hathor in her
holy of holies, all is like that sea in Syria which is called the Dead
Sea, in which every thing that tries to live presently dies and
perishes."

Paaker's eyes rolled as he spoke, and his voice sounded hoarsely as he
went on.

"But Mena was near to the king--nearer than I, and your mother--"

"My mother!"--Nefert interrupted the angry Mohar. "My mother did not
choose my husband. I saw him driving the chariot, and to me he resembled
the Sun God, and he observed me, and looked at me, and his glance pierced
deep into my heart like a spear; and when, at the festival of the king's
birthday, he spoke to me, it was just as if Hathor had thrown round me a
web of sweet, sounding sunbeams. And it was the same with Mena; he
himself has told me so since I have been his wife. For your sake my
mother rejected his suit, but I grew pale and dull with longing for him,
and he lost his bright spirit, and was so melancholy that the king
remarked it, and asked what weighed on his heart--for Rameses loves him
as his own son. Then Mena confessed to the Pharaoh that it was love that
dimmed his eye and weakened his strong hand; and then the king himself
courted me for his faithful servant, and my mother gave way, and we were
made man and wife, and all the joys of the justified in the fields of
Aalu

[The fields of the blest, which were opened to glorified souls. In
the Book of the Dead it is shown that in them men linger, and sow
and reap by cool waters.]

are shallow and feeble by the side of the bliss which we two have
known--not like mortal men, but li