“Just then my mother came up, as red as a poppy and panting for breath:  she took me by the hand without a word, dragged me into the chariot after her, and then cried out quite beside herself—­she could not even shed a tear for rage:  ’What insolence! what unheard-of behavior—­How can I find the heart to tell you, poor sacrificed lamb. . .’”

“And she would have gone on, but that I would not let her finish; I told her at once that I knew all, and happily I was able to keep quite calm.  I had some bad hours at home; and when Nilus came to us yesterday, after the opening of the will, and brought me the pretty little gold box with turquoises and pearls that I have always admired, and told me that the good Mukaukas had written with his own hand, in his last will, that it was to be given to me I his bright little ‘Katharina,’ my mother insisted on my not taking it and sent it back to Neforis, though I begged and prayed to keep it.  And of course I shall never go to that house again; indeed my mother talks of quitting Memphis altogether and settling in Constantinople or some other city under Christian rule.  ’Then our nice, pretty house must be given up, and our dear, lovely garden 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?”