found?
And that in me, in this vast desert plain,
The sleeping gift of song awakes again?"

"Do you not ascribe to the desert what is due to love?" said Nefert.

"I owe it to both; but I must acknowledge that the desert is a wonderful
physician for a sick soul. We take refuge from the monotony that
surrounds us in our own reflections; the senses are at rest; and here,
undisturbed and uninfluenced from without, it is given to the mind to
think out every train of thought to the end, to examine and exhaust
every feeling to its finest shades. In the city, one is always a mere
particle in a great whole, on which one is dependent, to which one
must contribute, and from which one must accept something. The solitary
wanderer in the desert stands quite alone; he is in a manner freed from
the ties which bind him to any great human community; he must fill up
the void by his own identity, and seek in it that which may give his
existence significance and consistency. Here, where the present retires
into the background, the thoughtful spirit finds no limits however
remote."

"Yes; one can think well in the desert," said Nebsecht. "Much has become
clear to me here that in Egypt I only guessed at."

"What may that be?" asked Pentaur.

"In the first place," replied Nebsecht, "that we none of us really know
anything rightly; secondly that the ass may love the rose, but the
rose will not love the ass; and the third thing I will keep to myself,
because it is my secret, and though it concerns all the world no one
would trouble himself about it. My lord chamberlain, how is this? You
know exactly how low people must bow before the princess in proportion
to their rank, and have no idea how a back-bone is made."

"Why should I?" asked the chamberlain. "I have to attend to outward
things, while you are contemplating inward things; else your hair might
be smoother, and your dress less stained."

The travellers reached the old Cheta city of Hebron without accident;
there they took leave of Abocharabos, and under the safe escort of
Egyptian troops started again for the north. At Hebron Pentaur parted
from the princess, and Bent-Anat bid him farewell without complaining.

Uarda's father, who had learned every path and bridge in Syria,
accompanied the poet, while the physician Nebsecht remained with the
ladies, whose good star seemed to have deserted them with Pentaur's
departure, for the violent winter rains which fell in th