It was so near the dawn of day when we parted, that we again found the sun sinking westward when we rejoined each other. The smile with which she met me,—so frankly cordial,—might have been taken for the greeting of a long mellowed friendship, did not the blush and the castdown eyelid, that followed, give symptoms of a feeling newer and less calm. For myself, lightened as I was, in some degree, by the confession which I had made, I was yet too conscious of the new aspect thus given to our intercourse, to feel altogether unembarrassed at the prospect of returning to the theme. It was, therefore, willingly we both suffered our attention to be diverted, by the variety of objects that presented themselves on the way, from a subject that both equally trembled to approach. The river was now full of life and motion. Every moment we met with boats descending the current, so independent of aid from sail or oar, that the sailors sat idly upon the deck as they shot along, singing or playing upon their double‐reeded pipes. Of these boats, the greater number came loaded with merchandise from Coptos,—some with those large emeralds, from the mine in the desert, whose colours, it is said, are brightest at the full of the moon, and some laden with frankincense from the acacia‐groves near the Red Sea. On the decks of others, that had been to the Golden Mountains beyond Syene, were heaped blocks and fragments of that sweet‐smelling wood, which the Green Nile of Nubia washes down in the season of the floods. Our companions up the stream were far less numerous. Occasionally a boat, returning lightened from the fair of last night, with those high sails that catch every breeze from over the hills, shot past us;—while, now and then, we overtook one of those barges full of bees, that at this season of the year, are sent to colonise the gardens of the south, and take advantage of the first flowers after the inundation has passed away. By these various objects we were, for a short time, enabled to divert the conversation from lighting and settling upon the one subject, round which it continually hovered. But the effort, as might be expected, was not long successful. As evening advanced, the whole scene became more solitary. We less frequently ventured to look upon each other, and our intervals of silence grew more long. It was near sunset, when, in passing a small temple on the shore, whose porticoes were now full of the evening light, we saw, issuing from a thicket of acanthus near it, a train of young maids linked together in the dance by lotus‐stems, held at arms’ length between them. Their tresses were also wreathed with this emblem of the season, and such a profusion of the white flowers were twisted round their waists and arms, that they might have been taken, as they gracefully bounded along the bank, for Nymphs of the Nile, risen freshly from their gardens under the wave.