Around all these islands were well-sweeps, with buckets by which bronze-hued naked men with dirty breech clouts raised water from the Nile and poured it into higher reservoirs. One such place was in the prince's mind especially. That was a steep eminence on the side of which three men were working at three well-sweeps. One poured water from the river into the lowest well; another drew from the lowest and raised water two yards higher to a middle place; the third raised water from the middle to the highest place. There some people, also naked, drew water in buckets, and irrigated beds of vegetables, or watered trees from sprinkling-pots.
The movement of the sweeps going down and rising, the turn of the buckets, the gushing of the pots was so rhythmic that the men who caused it might be thought automatons. No one of them spoke to his neighbor, no man changed place or looked about him; he merely bent and rose in one single method from daylight until evening, from one month to another, and doubtless he had worked thus from childhood and would so work till death took him.
"And creatures such as these," thought the prince, as he looked at their toil, "desire me to realize their imaginings. What change in the state can they wish? Is it that he who draws from the lowest well should go to the highest, or instead of pouring from a bucket should sprinkle trees with a watering pot?"
Anger rose to his head, and humiliation crushed him because he, the heir to the throne, thanks to the fables of creatures like those who nodded all their lives over wells of dirty water, was not now the vice- pharaoh.
At that moment he heard a low rustle among the trees, and delicate hands rested on his shoulder.
"Well, Sarah?" asked the prince, without turning his head.
"Thou art sad, my lord. Moses was not so delighted at sight of the promised land as I was at those words of thine:
"I am coming to live with thee. But Thou art a day and a night here, and I have not seen thy smile yet. Thou dost not even speak to me, but goest about in gloom, and at night Thou dost not fondle me, but only sighest."
"I have trouble."
"Tell me what it is. Grief is like a treasure given to be guarded. As long as we guard it ourselves even sleep flees away, and we find relief only when we put some one else to watch for us."