harm her. The culprit glances with haggard face and wildly
pleading eyes at the woman, once so imperial in her pride,
now cowering a thing accursed, clothed only with her
shame and flood of ebon hair. The great sun, that hung in
mid-heaven like a disk of burnished brass when she first
forgot her duty, descends like a monstrous wheel of blood
upon the western desert and through the casement pours a
ruddy glow over the prostrate figure a marble Venus
blushing rosy red. Joseph casts his coarse garment over
his companion as one might clothe the beauteous dead,
and turns away, the picture of Despair, the avatar of guilty
Fear.

. . .

Love is a dangerous game to play, and oft begun in wanton
mischief ends in woeful madness. In the first flush of
shame and rage Mrs. Potiphar was eager to punish the
slave's presumption, even though herself o'erwhelmed in
his ruin; but hate, though fierce, is a fickle flame in the
female heart, and seldom survives a single flood of tears.
Already Joseph's handsome face is haunting her--already
she is dreaming o'er the happy hours by Nilus' bank, where
first he praised her wondrous beauty--beneath the
nodding palms when the fireflies blazed and the bulbul
poured its song. The love that has lain latent within her
bosom, or burned with friendship's unconsuming flame,
awakes like smoldering embers fanned by desert winds and
fed with camphor wood, enveloping all her world. She
longs to leave the loveless life with her sullen lord; to cast