f me; he was like the fruit of the doom palm; its husk is hard and
rough, but he who knows how to open it finds the sweet pulp within. Now
he is dead, and my grandfather and grandmother are gone before him, and
I am like the green leaf that I saw floating on the waters when we were
crossing the sea; anything so forlorn I never saw, abandoned by all it
belonged to or had ever loved, the sport of a strange element in which
nothing resembling itself ever grew or ever can grow."

Nefert kissed her forehead. "You have friends," she said, "who will
never abandon you."

"I know, I know!" said Uarda thoughtfully, "and yet I am alone--for the
first time really alone. In Thebes I have often looked after the wild
swans as they passed across the sky; one flies in front, then comes
the body of the wandering party, and very often, far behind, a solitary
straggler; and even this last one I do not call lonely, for he can still
see his brethren in front of him. But when the hunters have shot down
all the low-flying loiterers, and the last one has lost sight of the
flock, and knows that he never again can find them or follow them he is
indeed to be pitied. I am as unhappy as the abandoned bird, for I have
lost sight to-day of all that I belong to, and I am alone, and can never
find them again."

"You will be welcomed into some more noble house than that to which you
belong by birth," said Nefert, to comfort her.

Uarda's eyes flashed, and she said proudly, almost defiantly:

"My race is that of my mother, who was a daughter of no mean house; the
reason I turned back this morning and went into the smoke and fire
again after I had escaped once into the open air--what I went back for,
because I felt it was worth dying for, was my mother's legacy, which I
had put away with my holiday dress when I followed the wretched Nemu to
his tent. I threw myself into the jaws of death to save the jewel, but
certainly not because it is made of gold and precious stones--for I do
not care to be rich, and I want no better fare than a bit of bread and a
few dates and a cup of water--but because it has a name on it in strange
characters, and because I believe it will serve to discover the people
from whom my mother was carried off; and now I have lost the jewel, and
with it my identity and my hopes and happiness."

Uarda wept aloud; Nefert put her arm around her affectionately.

"Poor child!" she said, "was your treasure destroyed in the flames?"

"No