"The master sends you this. Eat, maiden, and regain your strength." Tahoser was not very hungry, but her part required that she should exhibit some appetite; the poor must necessarily devour the food which pity throws them. So she ate, and drank a long draught of the cool water. The servant having gone, she resumed her contemplative attitude. Innumerable contradictory thoughts filled her mind: sometimes with maidenly shame she repented the step she had taken; at others, carried away by her passion, she exulted in her own audacity. Then she said to herself: "Here I am, it is true, under Poeri's roof; I shall see him freely every day; I shall silently drink in his beauty, which is more that of a god than of a man; I shall hear his lovely voice, which is like the music of the soul. But will he, who never paid any attention to me when I passed by his home dressed in my most brilliant garments, adorned with my richest gems, perfumed with scents and flowers, mounted on my painted and gilded car surmounted by a sunshade, and surrounded like a queen with a retinue of servants,--will he pay more attention to the poor suppliant maiden whom he has received through pity and who is dressed in mean stuff? Will my wretchedness accomplish what my wealth could not do? It may be, after all, that I am ugly, and that Nofre flatters me when she maintains that from the unknown sources of the Nile to the place where it casts itself into the sea there is no lovelier maid than her mistress. Yet no,--I am beautiful; the blazing eyes of men have told me so a thousand times, and especially have the annoyed airs and the disdainful pouts of the women who passed by me confirmed it. Will Poeri, who has inspired me with such mad passion, never love me? He would have received just as kindly an old, wrinkled woman with withered breasts, clothed in hideous rags, and with feet grimy with dust. Any one but he would at once have recognised, under the disguise of Hora, Tahoser the daughter of the high-priest Petamounoph; but he never cast his eyes upon me any more than does the basalt statue of a god upon the devotees who offer up to it quarters of antelope and baskets of lotus." These thoughts cast down the courage of Tahoser. Then she regained confidence, and said to herself that her beauty, her youth, her love would surely at last move that insensible heart. She would be so sweet, so attentive, so devoted, she would use so much art and coquetry in dressing herself, that certainly Poeri would not be able to resist. Then she promised herself to reveal to him that the humble servant-maid was a girl of high rank, possessing slaves, estates, and palaces, and she foresaw, in her imagination, a life of splendid and radiant happiness following upon a period of obscure felicity. "First and foremost, let me make myself beautiful," she said, as she rose and walked towards one of the pools.