They walked to the big pond where Maki's birch tree grew. It had never recovered after the scorching Sheheb. Everything round it was green and in flower, but it was dead and only on some of the bare branches a withered leaf showed black.
Maki put her arms round the pale, slender stem and pressed her cheek against it.
"Poor, poor darling!" she whispered tenderly as though saying good-bye to a friend who had died.
"A-ah, you remember the superstition!" Rita said, with a laugh. "If one plants a tree and it dies, the person who planted it will die also. Well, even if you do die, that's nothing very dreadful—you will have had a child anyway. To think of God sending such happiness to one who doesn't want it! Why, I would die ten times if I could only have a child."
After walking round the big pond, they came to the Lotos pond, with Aton's chapel on a little island and a small bridge leading to it. A huge lotos, not yet fully opened, showed white on the water. A boat was tied near by. Rita jumped into it, and seeing a garden knife at the bottom, took it to cut the lotos; she gave the flower to Maki and hid the knife in the bosom of her dress.
They went back to the Water-House and sat down in the old place.
"You haven't been to see Shiha for some time, have you?" Rita asked.
"No, I haven't."
"And I often go to him. It is interesting. A regular abode of love. All our dignitaries' wives keep going there. These eunuchs are excellent matchmakers. And they are themselves fond of women—and the women like it, of course. Shiha tempts me, too, with the god's marriage-bed: 'the god will come down to you in the night like a bridegroom to his bride,' he says. But I am not a fool to buy a pig in a poke. Instead of a god a slave or a dirty Jew may come and disgrace one..."
She paused and then spoke again, looking straight into Maki's eyes: