Khnum thought that Yubra had suddenly lost his reason or was possessed by the devil. He was sorry for his old and faithful servant. He could not pardon Yubra completely, but he punished him lightly and did not even have him beaten; he merely had him put into the pit; he thought Yubra would come to his senses. But Yubra had been in the pit for four days and was as obdurate as ever.
There was a special reason why Khnum was so kind to him. In his youth Khnum liked to hunt crocodiles in the Lake country, Miuer, where he had a large estate by the town Shedet, consecrated to the crocodile-headed Sun god, Sobek. He used to spend several days there during the hunting season.
Every morning, while he was still in bed, a freshly washed and pleated white robe was brought to him by the fifteen-year old Maïta, a clever laundress—wife and sister of the young gardener Yubra: poor people often married their sisters so as not to divide the property.
At dusk Khnum used to hear in the back yard, where some planks ran out from the laundry into the pond, the loud squelching of the bat over the wet linen and Maïta's girlish voice singing:
"My sister is on the opposite bank
The river flows between us,
And a crocodile lies on the sand.
Fearless I go into the water,
Water is to me like the dry land,
Love gives me courage and strength,
Love—the all-powerful magic."
But one could hear from her voice that she did not yet know what love meant. "She will soon learn," Khnum thought with quiet pity.
One day she sang a different song:
"The pomegranate tree spoke and said:
My round fruits are her breasts,
The seeds in the fruit are her teeth,
The heart of my fruits are her lips,
And what the sister does with the brother,
Gladdened by the sparkling wine,
Is hidden by my branches thick."
And for the first time Khnum detected something not childish in Maïta's childish voice. "She will be like the rest," he thought, without any pity, and all of a sudden the flame of Set breathed into his face and lust stung his heart like a scorpion.
He knew that neither men nor gods would condemn him if he, the master, said to his slave "come into my bed," as simply as on a hot day he would say to her, "give me a drink." But Khnum was indeed a just and pious man. He remembered that besides his wife Nibituia he had twelve concubines and as many beautiful slaves as he liked, while Yubra had only Maïta. Was the master to take his servant's only lamb? "This shall not be," he decided, and he left the Lake country never to return.