hopeful, every day she foretold help from the king for the next; in truth
she was ready to believe that, when Mena learned from Rameri that she was
with the princess, he himself would come to fetch them if his duties
allowed it. In her hours of most lively expectation she could go so far
as to picture how the party in the tents would be divided, and who would
bear Bent-Anat company if Mena took her with him to his camp, on what
spot of the oasis it would be best to pitch it, and much more in the same
vein.

Uarda could very well take her place with Bent-Anat, for the child had
developed and improved on the journey. The rich clothes which the
princess had given her became her as if she had never worn any others;
she could obey discreetly, disappear at the right moment, and, when she
was invited, chatter delightfully. Her laugh was silvery, and nothing
consoled Bent-Anat so much as to hear it.

Her songs too pleased the two friends, though the few that she knew were
grave and sorrowful. She had learned them by listening to old Hekt, who
often used to play on a lute in the dusk, and who, when she perceived
that Uarda caught the melodies, had pointed out her faults, and given her
advice.

"She may some day come into my hands," thought the witch, "and the better
she sings, the better she will be paid."

Bent-Anat too tried to teach Uarda, but learning to read was not easy to
the girl, however much pains she might take. Nevertheless, the princess
would not give up the spelling, for here, at the foot of the immense
sacred mountain at whose summit she gazed with mixed horror and longing,
she was condemned to inactivity, which weighed the more heavily on her in