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?"