lived with her, like a father with his child. She was
always friendly, but if I approached her, and tried to show her any
fondness, she would look at me, and the demon in her eyes drove me back,
and I let her alone.

"She grew healthier and stronger and more and more beautiful, so
beautiful that I kept her hidden, and was consumed by the longing to
make her my wife. A good housewife she never became, to be sure; her
hands were so tender, and she did not even know how to milk the goat. My
mother did that and everything else for her.

"In the daytime she stayed in her hut and worked, for she was very
skillful at woman's work, and wove lace as fine as cobwebs, which my
mother sold that she might bring home perfumes with the proceeds. She
was very fond of them, and of flowers too; and Uarda in there takes
after her.

"In the evening, when the folk from the other side had left the City
of the Dead, she would often walk down the valley here, thoughtful and
often looking up at the moon, which she was especially fond of.

"One evening in the winter-time I came home. It was already dark, and I
expected to find her in front of the door. All at once, about a hundred
steps behind old Hekt's cave, I heard a troop of jackals barking so
furiously that I said to myself directly they had attacked a human
being, and I knew too who it was, though no one had told me, and the
woman could not call or cry out. Frantic with terror, I tore a firebrand
from the hearth and the stake to which the goat was fastened out of the
ground, rushed to her help, drove away the beasts, and carried her back
senseless to the hut. My mother helped me, and we called her back to
life. When we were alone, I wept like a child for joy at her escape, and
she let me kiss her, and then she became my wife, three years after I
had bought her.

"She bore me a little maid, that she herself named Uarda; for she showed
us a rose, and then pointed to the child, and we understood her without
words.

"Soon afterwards she died.

"You are a priest, but I tell you that when I am summoned before Osiris,
if I am admitted amongst the blessed, I will ask whether I shall meet my
wife, and if the doorkeeper says no, he may thrust me back, and I will
go down cheerfully to the damned, if I find her again there."

"And did no sign ever betray her origin?" asked the physician.

The soldier had hidden his face in his hand; he was weeping aloud, and
did not hear the question. But,