little 'Katharina,' my mother insisted
on my not taking it and sent it back to Neforis, though I begged and
prayed to keep it. And of course I shall never go to that house again;
indeed my mother talks of quitting Memphis altogether and settling in
Constantinople or some other city under Christian rule. 'Then our nice,
pretty house must be given up, and our dear, lovely garden be sold to the
peasant folk, my mother says. It was just the same a year and a half ago
with Memnon's palace. His garden was turned into a corn-field, and the
splendid ground-floor rooms, with their mosaics and pictures, are now
dirty stables for cows and sheep, and pigs are fed in the rooms that
belonged to Hathor and Dorothea. Good Heavens! And they were my clearest
friends! And I am never to play with Mary any more; and mother has not a
kind word for any living soul, hardly even for me, and my old nurse is as
deaf as a mole! Am I not a really miserable, lonely creature? And if you,
even you, will have nothing to say to me, who is there in all Memphis
whom I can trust in? But you will not be so cruel, will you? And it will
not be for long, for my mother really means to go away. You are older
than I am, of course, and much graver and wiser. . . ."

"I will be kind to you, child; but try to make friends with Pulcheria!"

"Gladly, gladly. But then my mother! I should get on very well by myself
if it were not. . . Well, you yourself heard what Orion said to me, that
time in the avenue. He surely loved me a little! What sweet, tender names
he gave me then. Oh God! no man can speak like that to any one he is not
fond of!--And he is rich himself; it cannot have been only my fortune
that bewitched him. And does he look like a man who would allow himself
to be parted from a girl by his mother, whether he would or no?"

"He was always fond of me I think; but then, afterwards, he remembered
what a high position he had to fill and regarded me as too little and too
childish. Oh, how many tears I have shed over being so absurdly little! A
Water-wagtail--that is what I shall always be. Your old host called me
so; and if a man like Orion feels that he must have a stately wife I can
hardly blame him. That other one whom he thinks he loves better than he
does me is tall and beautiful and majestic--like you; and I have always
told myself that his future wife ought to look like you. It is all over
between him and me, and I will submit humbly; but at the same time