t excites you," she said, "and stirs your heart and tongue! If two
strings are tuned in harmony, and one is struck, the other sounds, my
music master tells me. I believe you would listen to me till morning if
I only talked to you about my love. But it was not for that that we
came out on the balcony. Now listen! I am as lonely as you, I love less
happily than you, the House of Seti threatens me with evil times--and
yet I can preserve my full confidence in life and my joy in existence.
How can you explain this?"

"We are so very different," said Nefert.

"True," replied Bent-Anat, "but we are both young, both women, and both
wish to do right. My mother died, and I have had no one to guide me, for
I who for the most part need some one to lead me can already command,
and be obeyed. You had a mother to bring you up, who, when you were
still a child, was proud of her pretty little daughter, and let her--as
it became her so well-dream and play, without warning her against the
dangerous propensity. Then Mena courted you. You love him truly, and
in four long years he has been with you but a month or two; your mother
remained with you, and you hardly observed that she was managing your
own house for you, and took all the trouble of the household. You had
a great pastime of your own--your thoughts of Mena, and scope for a
thousand dreams in your distant love. I know it, Nefert; all that you
have seen and heard and felt in these twenty months has centred in him
and him alone. Nor is it wrong in itself. The rose tree here, which
clings to my balcony, delights us both; but if the gardener did not
frequently prune it and tie it with palm-bast, in this soil, which
forces everything to rapid growth, it would soon shoot up so high that
it would cover door and window, and I should sit in darkness. Throw this
handkerchief over your shoulders, for the dew falls as it grows cooler,
and listen to me a little longer!--The beautiful passion of love and
fidelity has grown unchecked in your dreamy nature to such a height,
that it darkens your spirit and your judgment. Love, a true love, it
seems to me, should be a noble fruit-tree, and not a rank weed. I do not
blame you, for she who should have been the gardener did not heed--and
would not heed--what was happening. Look, Nefert, so long as I wore the
lock of youth, I too did what I fancied--I never found any pleasure in
dreaming, but in wild games with my brothers, in horses and in falconry;
t