at air; it fascinates, benumbs me, it takes away my
memory like a cup of nepenthe. Repeat it until sleep and forgetfulness
fall upon my eyelids."

Poeri's eyes, fixed at first upon Tahoser, soon were half-closed, and
then completely so. The maiden continued to strike the strings of the
mandore, and sang more and more softly the refrain of her song. Poeri
slept. She stopped and fanned him with a palm-leaf fan thrown on the
table.

Poeri was handsome, and sleep imparted to his pure features an
indescribable expression of languor and tenderness. His long eyelashes
falling upon his cheeks seemed to conceal from him a celestial vision,
and his beautiful, red, half-open lips trembled as if they were speaking
mute words to an invisible being. After a long contemplation, emboldened
by silence and solitude, Tahoser, forgetting herself, bent over the
sleeper's brow, kept back her breath, pressed her heart with her hand,
and placed a timid, furtive, winged kiss upon it. Then she drew back
ashamed and blushing. The sleeper had faintly felt in his dream
Tahoser's lips; he uttered a sigh and said in Hebrew, "Oh, Ra'hel,
beloved Ra'hel!"

Fortunately these words of an unknown tongue conveyed no meaning to
Tahoser, and she again took up the palm-leaf fan, hoping yet fearing
that Poeri would awake.

VII

When day dawned, Nofre, who slept on a cot at her mistress's feet, was
surprised at not hearing Tahoser call her as usual by clapping her
hands. She rose on her elbow and saw that the bed was empty; yet the
first beams of the sun, striking the frieze of the portico, were only
now beginning to cast on the wall the shadow of the capitals and of the
upper part of the shafts of the pillars. Usually Tahoser was not an
early riser, and she rarely rose without the assistance of her women.
Neither did she ever go out until after her hair had been dressed, and
perfumed water had been poured over her lovely body, while she knelt,
her hands crossed upon her bosom.

Nofre, feeling uneasy, put on a transparent gown, slipped her feet into
sandals of palm fibre, and set out in search of her mistress. She looked
for her first under the portico of the two courts, thinking that, unable
to sleep, Tahoser had perhaps gone to enjoy the coolness of dawn in the
inner cloisters; but she was not there.

"Let me visit the garden," said Nofre to herself; "perhaps she took a
fancy to see the night dew sparkle on the leaves of the plants and to
wa