“Hast thou not something more to tell me?” he asked kindly.  “Do thou rest here on the wharf while we talk.  Art thou not quite breathless?”

“Nay, I thank thee,” she faltered.  “I may not linger.”  The hand once again sought the folds over her breast.

“Then let me walk with thee on thy way.  It will be dark soon.”

“Nay,” she protested flushing, “and again, I thank thee.  It is not needful.”  She made a movement as if to leave him, but he stepped to her side.

“Out upon thee, daughter of Israel, thou art ungracious,” he remonstrated laughingly.  “I can not think thee so wondrous brave.  For it is a long walk to the camp and the night will be pitch-black.  Why may I not go with thee?”

“There is naught to be feared.”

“Of a truth?  Those hills are as full of wild beasts as Amenti is of spirits.  And even if no hurt befell thee, the trepidation of that long journey would be cruel.  Nay; Ptah, the gallant god, would spurn my next offering, did I send thee back to camp alone.  Wilt thou come?”

She bowed and dropped behind him.  Her resolution to maintain the forms of different rank between them was not characteristic of other slaves he had known.  There was no presumption or humble gratitude in her manner when he would offer her the courtesies of an equal, but he had met the disdain of a peer once when he thought he talked with a slave.  There was something mocking in her perfunctory deference, but her pride was genuine.  Her conduct seemed to say:  “I would liefer be a Hebrew and a slave than a princess of the God-forgotten realm of Egypt.”

The young sculptor was unruffled, however.  He was turning over in his mind, with interest, the evidence that tended to show that the Israelite had something more to tell him, that her courage had failed her, and that her hand had sought something concealed in her dress.  He recalled the former meetings with her and arrived at a surmise so sudden and so conclusive that with difficulty he kept himself from making outward demonstration of his conviction.  “The collar, by Apis!  I offended her with the trinket.  And she came to make me take it back, but her courage fled.  Pie upon my clumsy gallantries!  I must make amends.  I would not have her hate me.”

He broke the silence with an old, old remark—­one that Adam might have made to Eve.

“Look at the stars, Rachel.  There is a dark casement in the heavens—­a blink of the eye and the lamp is alight.”

“So I watch them every night.  But they are swifter here in Memphis.  At Mendes, where Israel toiled once, they are more deliberate,” she answered readily.

“Aye, but you should see them at Philae.  They ignite and bound into brilliance like sparks of meeting metal and flint.  Ah, but the tropics are precipitate!”

“I know them not,” she ventured.

“Their acquaintance is better avoided.  They have no mean—­they leap from extreme to extreme.  They are violent, immoderate.  It is instant night and instant day; it is the maddest passion of summer always.  Nature reigns at the top of her voice and chokes her realm with the fervor of her maternity.  Nay, give me the north.  I would feel the earth’s pulse now and then without burning my fingers.”