Katuti’s daughter had in the last few hours felt like one born blind, and who suddenly receives his sight.  He looks at the brightness of the sun, and the manifold forms of the creation around him, but the beams of the day-star blind its eyes, and the new forms, which he has sought to guess at in his mind, and which throng round him in their rude reality, shock him and pain him.  To-day, for the first time, she had asked herself wherefore her mother, and not she herself, was called upon to control the house of which she nevertheless was called the mistress, and the answer had rung in her ears:  “Because Mena thinks you incapable of thought and action.”  He had often called her his little rose, and she felt now that she was neither more nor less than a flower that blossoms and fades, and only charms the eye by its color and beauty.

“My mother,” she said to Bent-Anat, “no doubt loves me, but she has managed badly for Mena, very badly; and I, miserable idiot, slept and dreamed of Mena, and saw and heard nothing of what was happening to his—­to our—­inheritance.  Now my mother is afraid of my husband, and those whom we fear, says my uncle, we cannot love, and we are always ready to believe evil of those we do not love.  So she lends an ear to those people who blame Mena, and say of him that he has driven me out of his heart, and has taken a strange woman to his tent.  But it is false and a lie; and I cannot and will not countenance my own mother even, if she embitters and mars what is left to me—­what supports me—­the breath and blood of my life—­my love, my fervent love for my husband.”

Bent-Anat had listened to her without interrupting her; she sat by her for a time in silence.  Then she said: 

“Come out into the gallery; then I will tell you what I think, and perhaps Toth may pour some helpful counsel into my mind.  I love you, and I know you well, and though I am not wise, I have my eyes open and a strong hand.  Take it, come with me on to the balcony.”

A refreshing breeze met the two women as they stepped out into the air.  It was evening, and a reviving coolness had succeeded the heat of the day.  The buildings and houses already cast long shadows, and numberless boats, with the visitors returning from the Necropolis, crowded the stream that rolled its swollen flood majestically northwards.

Close below lay the verdant garden, which sent odors from the rose-beds up to the princess’s balcony.  A famous artist had laid it out in the time of Hatasu, and the picture which he had in his mind, when he sowed the seeds and planted the young shoots, was now realized, many decades after his death.  He had thought of planning a carpet, on which the palace should seem to stand.  Tiny streams, in bends and curves, formed the outline of the design, and the shapes they enclosed were filled with plants of every size, form, and color; beautiful plats of fresh green turf everywhere represented the groundwork of the pattern, and flower-beds and clumps of shrubs stood out from them in harmonious mixtures of colors, while the tall and rare trees, of which Hatasu’s ships had brought several from Arabia, gave dignity and impressiveness to the whole.