"Set your mind at rest: it has bitten. You couldn't find another such pair: they have been made for each other. Man and woman—a hook and an eye—are two in love, but here there are four."
"How do you mean?"
"Why, there are two in him, two in her; an eye—a hook, a hook—an eye; once they catch there will be no disentangling them."
"You are a wise man, Ay!" Tuta said in delight.
III
A choir of blind singers began the hymn to Aton.
They had been tramps and beggars walking along the high roads from village to village. One day the king heard them at the gates of Aton's temple and liked their singing so much that he made them temple choristers—that God might receive praise not only from the happy, the wise and the seeing, but also from the blind, wretched and ignorant.
There were seven of them. They sat on their heels in a row before the king's tent, dressed only in short white aprons, their limbs thin as sticks, their bodies, with distended stomachs and the ribs showing through the skin, blackened by the sun, their heads shaven, their faces wrinkled; the folds of the skin near the mouth resembled those of an old sick dog; they were snub-nosed and, like dogs, seemed to be always sniffing; there were narrow, inflamed slits where their eyes should have been.