“How strange!” exclaimed Rameri. “Who would have given the singular physician, who always wore such dirty clothes, credit for such generosity? But what is this jewel that you have?”
Uarda opened her shirt, and showed the prince the sparkling ornament.
“Those are diamonds—it is very valuable!” cried the prince; “and there in the middle on the onyx there are sharply engraved signs. I cannot read them, but I will show them to the interpreter. Did your mother wear that?”
“My father found it on her when she died,” said Uarda. “She came to Egypt as a prisoner of war, and was as white as I am, but dumb, so she could not tell us the name of her home.”
“She belonged to some great house among the foreigners, and the children inherit from the mother,” cried the prince joyfully. “You are a princess, Uarda! Oh! how glad I am, and how much I love you!”
The girl smiled and said, “Now you will not be afraid to touch the daughter of the unclean.”
“You are cruel,” replied the prince. “Shall I tell you what I determined on yesterday—what would not let me sleep last night—and for what I came here today?”
“Well?”
Rameri took a most beautiful white rose out of his robe and said:
“It is very childish, but I thought how it would be if I might put this flower with my own hands into your shining hair. May I?”
“It is a splendid rose! I never saw such a fine one.”
“It is for my haughty princess. Do pray let me dress your hair! It is like silk from Tyre, like a swan’s breast, like golden star-beams—there, it is fixed safely! Nay, leave it so. If the seven Hathors could see you, they would be jealous, for you are fairer than all of them.”
“How you flatter!” said Uarda, shyly blushing, and looking into his sparkling eyes.
“Uarda,” said the prince, pressing her hand to his heart. “I have now but one wish. Feel how my heart hammers and beats. I believe it will never rest again till you—yes, Uarda—till you let me give you one, only one, kiss.”
The girl drew back.
“Now,” she said seriously. “Now I see what you want. Old Hekt knows men, and she warned me.”
“Who is Hekt, and what can she know of me?”
“She told me that the time would come when a man would try to make friends with me. He would look into my eyes, and if mine met his, then he would ask to kiss me. But I must refuse him, because if I liked him to kiss me he would seize my soul, and take it from me, and I must wander, like the restless ghosts, which the abyss rejects, and the storm whirls before it, and the sea will not cover, and the sky will not receive, soulless to the end of my days. Go away—for I cannot refuse you the kiss, and yet I would not wander restless, and without a soul!”
“Is the old woman who told you that a good woman?” asked Rameri.
Uarda shook her head.
“She cannot be good,” cried the prince. “For she has spoken a falsehood. I will not seize your soul; I will give you mine to be yours, and you shall give me yours to be mine, and so we shall neither of us be poorer—but both richer!”
“I should like to believe it,” said Uarda thoughtfully, “and I have thought the same kind of thing. When I was strong, I often had to go late in the evening to fetch water from the landing-place where the great water-wheel stands. Thousands of drops fall from the earthenware pails as it turns, and in each you can see the reflection of a moon, yet there is only one in the sky. Then I thought to myself, so it must be with the love in our hearts. We have but one heart, and yet we pour it out into other hearts without its losing in strength or in warmth. I thought of my grandmother, of my father, of little Scherau, of the Gods, and of Pentaur. Now I should like to give you a part of it too.”
“Only a part?” asked Rameri.
“Well, the whole will be reflected in you, you know,” said Uarda, “as the whole moon is reflected in each drop.”
“It shall!” cried the prince, clasping the trembling girl in his arms, and the two young souls were united in their first kiss.
“Now do go!” Uarda entreated.
“Let me stay a little while,” said Rameri. “Sit down here by me on the bench in front of the house. The hedge shelters us, and besides this valley is now deserted, and there are no passers by.”
“We are doing what is not right,” said Uarda. “If it were right we should not want to hide ourselves.”
“Do you call that wrong which the priests perform in the Holy of Holies?” asked the prince. “And yet it is concealed from all eyes.”
“How you can argue!” laughed Uarda. “That shows you can write, and are one of his disciples.”
“His, his!” exclaimed Rameri. “You mean Pentaur. He was always the dearest to me of all my teachers, but it vexes me when you speak of him as if he were more to you than I and every one else. The poet, you said, was one of the drops in which the moon of your soul finds a reflection—and I will not divide it with many.”
“How you are talking!” said Uarda. “Do you not honor your father, and the Gods? I love no one else as I do you—and what I felt when you kissed me—that was not like moon-light, but like this hot mid-day sun. When I thought of you I had no peace. I will confess to you now, that twenty times I looked out of the door, and asked whether my preserver—the kind, curly-headed boy—would really come again, or whether he despised a poor girl like me? You came, and I am so happy, and I could enjoy myself with you to my heart’s content. Be kind again—or I will pull your hair!”
“You!” cried Rameri. “You cannot hurt with your little hands, though you can with your tongue. Pentaur is much wiser and better than I, you owe much to him, and nevertheless I—”
“Let that rest,” interrupted the girl, growing grave. “He is not a man like other men. If he asked to kiss me, I should crumble into dust, as ashes dried in the sun crumble if you touch them with a finger, and I should be as much afraid of his lips as of a lion’s. Though you may laugh at it, I shall always believe that he is one of the Immortals. His own father told me that a great wonder was shown to him the very day after his birth. Old Hekt has often sent me to the gardener with a message to enquire after his son, and though the man is rough he is kind. At first he was not friendly, but when he saw how much I liked his flowers he grew fond of me, and set me to work to tie wreaths and bunches, and to carry them to his customers. As we sat together, laying the flowers side by side, he constantly told me something about his son, and his beauty and goodness and wisdom. When he was quite a little boy he could write poems, and he learned to read before any one had shown him how. The high-priest Ameni heard of it and took him to the House of Seti, and there he improved, to the astonishment of the gardener; not long ago I went through the garden with the old man. He talked of Pentaur as usual, and then stood still before a noble shrub with broad leaves, and said, My son is like this plant, which has grown up close to me, and I know not how. I laid the seed in the soil, with others that I bought over there in Thebes; no one knows where it came from, and yet it is my own. It certainly is not a native of Egypt; and is not Pentaur as high above me