“I wish,” she murmured, “that my eyes might close for ever, for I am very unhappy.” And two large tears rolled down her cheeks. “What has happened to you, my darling?” asked the princess sympathetically, and she drew her towards her, putting her arm round her like a sick child. Nefert glanced anxiously at the chamberlain, and the ladies in waiting who had entered the room with her, and Bent-Anat understood the look; she requested her attendants to withdraw, and when she was alone with her sad little friend--“Speak now,” she said. “What saddens your heart? how comes this melancholy expression on your dear baby face? Tell me, and I will comfort you, and you shall be my bright thoughtless plaything once more.” “Thy plaything!” answered Nefert, and a flash of displeasure sparkled in her eyes. “Thou art right to call me so, for I deserve no better name. I have submitted all my life to be nothing but the plaything of others.” “But, Nefert, I do not know you again,” cried Bent-Anat. “Is this my gentle amiable dreamer?” “That is the word I wanted,” said Nefert in a low tone. “I slept, and dreamed, and dreamed on--till Mena awoke me; and when he left me I went to sleep again, and for two whole years I have lain dreaming; but to-day I have been torn from my dreams so suddenly and roughly, that I shall never find any rest again.” While she spoke, heavy tears fell slowly one after another over her cheeks. Bent-Anat felt what she saw and heard as deeply as if Nefert were her own suffering child. She lovingly drew the young wife down by her side on the divan, and insisted on Nefert’s letting her know all that troubled her spirit. Katuti’s daughter had in the last few hours felt like one born blind, and who suddenly receives his sight. He looks at the brightness of the sun, and the manifold forms of the creation around him, but the beams of the day-star blind its eyes, and the new forms, which he has sought to guess at in his mind, and which throng round him in their rude reality, shock him and pain him. To-day, for the first time, she had asked herself wherefore her mother, and not she herself, was called upon to control the house of which she nevertheless was called the mistress, and the answer had rung in her ears: “Because Mena thinks you incapable of thought and action.” He had often called her his little rose, and she felt now that she was neither more nor less than a flower that blossoms and fades, and only charms the eye by its color and beauty.