be sold to the peasant folk, my mother says. It was just the same
a year and a half ago with Memnon's palace. His garden was turned into a
corn-field, and the splendid ground-floor rooms, with their mosaics and
pictures, are now dirty stables for cows and sheep, and pigs are fed in
the rooms that belonged to Hathor and Dorothea. Good Heavens! And they
were my clearest friends! And I am never to play with Mary any more; and
mother has not a kind word for any living soul, hardly even for me, and
my old nurse is as deaf as a mole! Am I not a really miserable, lonely
creature? And if you, even you, will have nothing to say to me, who is
there in all Memphis whom I can trust in? But you will not be so cruel,
will you? And it will not be for long, for my mother really means to go
away. You are older than I am, of course, and much graver and wiser...."

"I will be kind to you, child; but try to make friends with Pulcheria!"

"Gladly, gladly. But then my mother! I should get on very well by myself
if it were not... Well, you yourself heard what Orion said to me, that
time in the avenue. He surely loved me a little! What sweet, tender
names he gave me then. Oh God! no man can speak like that to any one
he is not fond of!--And he is rich himself; it cannot have been only my
fortune that bewitched him. And does he look like a man who would allow
himself to be parted from a girl by his mother, whether he would or no?"

"He was always fond of me I think; but then, afterwards, he remembered
what a high position he had to fill and regarded me as too little and
too childish. Oh, how many tears I have shed over being so absurdly
little! A Water-wagtail--that is what I shall always be. Your old host
called me so; and if a man like Orion feels that he must have a stately
wife I can hardly blame him. That other one whom he thinks he loves
better than he does me is tall and beautiful and majestic--like you; and
I have always told myself that his future wife ought to look like you.
It is all over between him and me, and I will submit humbly; but at the
same time I cannot help thinking that when he came home he thought me
pretty and attractive, and had a real fancy and liking for me. Yes,
it was so, it certainly was so!--But then he saw that other one, and
I cannot compare with her. She is indeed the woman he wants,--and that
other, Paula, is yourself. Yes, indeed, you yourself; an inner voice
tells me so. And I tell you truly, you may quite