rent thought, he
led Ephraim to Kasana's tent, and then hastened to his master.

Silence reigned within the light structure, which was composed of poles
and gay heavy stuffs, tenanted by the beautiful widow.

With a throbbing heart Ephraim approached the entrance, and when he at
last summoned courage and drew aside the curtain fastened firmly to the
earth, which the wind puffed out like a sail, he beheld a dark room, from
which a similar one opened on the right and left. The one on the left was
as dark as the central one; but a flickering light stole through numerous
chinks of the one on the right. The tent was one of those with a flat
roof, divided into three apartments, which he had often seen, and the
woman who irresistibly attracted him was doubtless in the lighted one.

To avoid exposing himself to fresh suspicion, he must conquer his timid
delay, and he had already stooped and loosed the loop which fastened the
curtain to the hook in the floor, when the door of the lighted room
opened and a woman's figure entered the dark central chamber.

Was it she?

Should he venture to speak to her? Yes, it must be done.

Panting for breath and clenching his hands, he summoned up his courage as
if he were about to steal unbidden into the most sacred sanctuary of a
temple. Then he pushed the curtain aside, and the woman whom he had just
noticed greeted him with a low cry.

But he speedily regained his composure, for a ray of light had fallen on
her face, revealing that the person who stood before him was not Kasana,
but her nurse, who had accompanied her to the prisoners and then to the
camp. She, too, recognized him and stared at him as though he had risen
from the grave.

They were old acquaintances; for when he was first brought to the
archer's house she had prepared his bath and moistened his wound with
balsam, and during his second stay beneath the same roof, she had joined
her mistress in nursing him. They had chatted away many an hour together,
and he knew that she was kindly disposed toward him; for when midway
between waking and sleeping, in his burning fever, her hand had stroked
him with maternal tenderness, and afterwards she had never wearied of
questioning him about his people and at last had acknowledged that she
was descended from the Syrians, who were allied to the Hebrews. Nay, even
his language was not wholly strange to her; for she had been a woman of
twenty when dragged to Egypt with other prisoners