, but something in the fervor of the music told her it was a
song of love--and a song of love unsatisfied. There was a pathos in it
that touched the fountain of her tears and awoke to willingness that
impulse in her womanhood that longs to comfort.

As she stood in an attitude of rapt attention. Kenkenes rounded a
curve in the valley just ahead of her. The song died suddenly on his
lips and the color deepened in his cheeks.

"Fie!" he exclaimed. "Here thou art, O Athor, catching me in the
imperfection of my practice. Now will the keen edge of their perfect
beauty be dulled upon thine ear when I come to lift my tuneful
devotions to thee."

"And it was thou singing?" she asked.

"It was I--and Pentaur; mine the voice; Pentaur's the song."

"Together ye have wrought an eloquent harmony, but such a voice as
thine would gild the pale effort of the poorest words," she said
earnestly. "What dost thou with thy voice?"

"Once I won me a pretty compliment with it," he said softly, bending
his head to look at her. She flushed and her eyes fell.

"Nay, it is but my pastime and at the command of my friends," he
continued. "See. This is what has made me sing."

He unslung his wallet and took out of it a statuette of creamy chalk.

"Thus far has the Athor of the hills progressed." He put it into her
hands for examination. The face was complete, the minute features as
perfect as life, the plaits of long hair and all the figure exquisitely
copied and shaped. The pedestal was yet in rough block. Rachel
inspected it, wondering. Finally she looked up at him with praise in
her eyes.

"Dost thou forgive me?" he asked.

"It is for me to ask thy forgiveness," she answered. "So we be equally
indebted and therefore not in debt."

"Not so. I know the joy of creating uncramped, and the joy of copying
such a model far outweighs any small delight thy little vanity may have
experienced. Thy vanity? Hast thou any vanity?"

"Nay, I trust not," she replied laughingly. "Vanity is self-esteem run
to seed."

"Sage! Let me make haste to carve the pedestal that I may know how low
to do obeisance to wisdom. Hold it so, I pray thee."

He took the statue and set it on a flat cornice jutting from the stone
wall. Rachel obediently steadied it. He selected from his tools a
knife with a rounded point of wonderful keenness and smoothed away the
chalk in bulk. They stood close together, the sculptor bending from
his commandi