But he could not forget Maïta. The flame of Set scorched his bones as the wind of the desert scorches the grass. He could not eat or drink or sleep and grew thin as a lath.
He had said nothing to Nibituia, but she guessed the truth. One early morning, while he was still asleep, Maïta came into the bedroom of his country house near Thebes, bringing freshly washed clothes. He woke up thinking he saw her in a dream or a vision, and when he understood she was real he asked:
"Where is Yubra, your brother?"
"Far away beyond the sea," she answered and burst into tears. Then she came up to him slowly, sat on the side of the bed, and with downcast eyes said, blushing and smiling through her tears:
"My mistress has sent me to my master. Here I am, your slave."
And Khnum asked her no more about Yubra.
That year was the happiest year of his life; and the best of all was that Nibituia had grown just as fond of Maïta as he was, perhaps even more so. She was jealous not of her but of other women and, strange to say, reproached him for preferring herself to Maïta. And Khnum did not know whom he loved most—the mistress or the slave: both these loves merged into one like two scents blending into one fragrance.
When he recalled it now, after thirty years, he whispered with tears of tenderness for the old companion of his life: "My poor little beetle!"
Nibituia had sent Yubra, the gardener, to Canaan to collect foreign flowers and plants for Khnum's gardens. And when, after a year's absence he returned, Maïta was no more: she had died in childbirth.
Khnum treated Yubra handsomely: he presented him with a fine plot of land, four pairs of oxen and a new wife—one of his own concubines. No one knew whether Yubra remembered Maïta or had forgotten her with a new wife, for he never spoke of her and behaved as though nothing had happened.