furnished."

They parted like two friends who were hunting a wild beast, and knew
that the problem was not that their spear should strike, but that the
beast should drop in its tracks and not go into other hands.

After some days Ramses visited Kama again, but found her in a state
touching on insanity. She hid herself in the darkest room of the villa;
she was hungry, her hair was not dressed, she was even unwashed. She
gave the most contradictory commands to her servants; at one time she
ordered all to come to her, at another she sent all away. In the night
she summoned the guard of warriors, and fled to the highest chamber
soon after, crying out that they wished to kill her.

In view of these actions all desire vanished from the prince's soul,
and there remained simply a feeling of great trouble. He seized his
head when the steward of the palace and the officer told him of these
wonders, and he whispered:

"Indeed, I did badly in taking that woman from her goddess; for the
goddess alone could endure her caprices with patience."

He went, however, to Kama, and found her emaciated, broken, and
trembling.

"Woe to me!" cried she. "There are none around me but enemies. My
tirewoman wishes to poison me; my hairdresser to give me some dreadful
disease. The warriors are waiting an opportunity to bury swords and
spears in my bosom; I am sure that instead of food, they prepare for me
magic herbs in the kitchen. All are rising up to destroy me."

"Kama!" interrupted the prince.

"Call me not by that name!" whispered she; "it will bring me
misfortune."

"But how do these ideas come to thee?"

"How? Dost Thou think that in the daytime I do not see strange people
who appear at the palace and vanish before I can call in my servants?
And in the night do I not hear people outside the wall whispering?"

"It seems so to thee."

"Cursed! Cursed!" cried Kama, weeping. "Ye all say that it seems to me.
But the day before yesterday some criminal hand threw into my
bedchamber a veil, which I wore half a day before I saw that it was not
mine and that I had never worn a veil like it."

"Where is that veil?" inquired the prince, now alarmed.

"I burned it, but I showed it first to my servants."

"If not thine even, what harm could come of it?"

"Nothing yet. But had I kept that rag in the house two days longer, I
should have been poisoned, or caught some incurable disorder. I know
Asiatics and their methods."

Wearied and