, come with me on to the balcony."

A refreshing breeze met the two women as they stepped out into the air.
It was evening, and a reviving coolness had succeeded the heat of the
day. The buildings and houses already cast long shadows, and numberless
boats, with the visitors returning from the Necropolis, crowded the
stream that rolled its swollen flood majestically northwards.

Close below lay the verdant garden, which sent odors from the rose-beds
up to the princess's balcony. A famous artist had laid it out in the time
of Hatasu, and the picture which he had in his mind, when he sowed the
seeds and planted the young shoots, was now realized, many decades after
his death. He had thought of planning a carpet, on which the palace
should seem to stand. Tiny streams, in bends and curves, formed the
outline of the design, and the shapes they enclosed were filled with
plants of every size, form, and color; beautiful plats of fresh green
turf everywhere represented the groundwork of the pattern, and
flower-beds and clumps of shrubs stood out from them in harmonious
mixtures of colors, while the tall and rare trees, of which Hatasu's
ships had brought several from Arabia, gave dignity and impressiveness to
the whole.

Clear drops sparkled on leaf and flower and blade, for, only a short time
before, the garden by Bent-Anat's house had been freshly watered. The
Nile beyond surrounded an island, where flourished the well-kept sacred
grove of Anion.

The Necropolis on the farther side of the river was also well seen from
Bent-Anat's balcony. There stood in long perspective the rows of
sphinxes, which led from the landing-place of the festal barges to the
gigantic buildings of Amenophis III. with its colossi--the hugest in
Thebes--to the House of Seti, and to the temple of Hatasu. There lay the
long workshops of the embalmers and closely-packed homes of the
inhabitants of the City of the Dead. In the farthest west rose the Libyan
mountains with their innumerable graves, and the valley of the kings'
tombs took a wide curve behind, concealed by a spur of the hills.

The two women looked in silence towards the west. The sun was near the
horizon--now it touched it, now it sank behind the hills; and as the
heavens flushed with hues like living gold, blazing rubies, and liquid
garnet and amethyst, the evening chant rang out from all the temples, and
the friends sank on their knees, hid their faces in the bower-rose
garlands that clu