the day after may be sent no one
knows where."

"He is a good fellow," said the physician interrupting his friend, and
stammering violently. "But who 'would do anything to the child? She is
so so.... She is so charming, so perfectly--sweet and lovely."

With these last words he cast down his eyes and reddened like a girl.

"You understand that," he said, "better than I do; yes, and you also
think her beautiful! Strange! you must not laugh if I confess--I am
but a man like every one else--when I confess, that I believe I have at
length discovered in myself the missing organ for beauty of form--not
believe merely, but truly have discovered it, for it has not only
spoken, but cried, raged, till I felt a rushing in my ears, and for the
first time was attracted more by the sufferer than by suffering. I have
sat in the hut as though spell-bound, and gazed at her hair, at her
eyes, at how she breathed. They must long since have missed me at the
House of Seti, perhaps discovered all my preparations, when seeking me
in my room! For two days and nights I have allowed myself to be drawn
away from my work, for the sake of this child. Were I one of the laity,
whom you would approach, I should say that demons had bewitched me.
But it is not that,"--and with these words the physician's eyes flamed
up--"it is not that! The animal in me, the low instincts of which the
heart is the organ, and which swelled my breast at her bedside, they
have mastered the pure and fine emotions here--here in this brain; and
in the very moment when I hoped to know as the God knows whom you call
the Prince of knowledge, in that moment I must learn that the animal in
me is stronger than that which I call my God."

The physician, agitated and excited, had fixed his eyes on the ground
during these last words, and hardly noticed the poet, who listened to
him wondering and full of sympathy. For a time both were silent; then
Pentaur laid his hand on his friend's hand, and said cordially:

"My soul is no stranger to what you feel, and heart and head, if I may
use your own words, have known a like emotion. But I know that what we
feel, although it may be foreign to our usual sensations, is loftier
and more precious than these, not lower. Not the animal, Nebsecht, is
it that you feel in yourself, but God. Goodness is the most beautiful
attribute of the divine, and you have always been well-disposed
towards great and small; but I ask you, have you ever before fe