"Yes, it is. You are glad?"
Dio did not answer, she seemed lost in thought. Pentaur paused, too, and then said:
"Perhaps the world will perish through this...."
"Let it!" she answered, and it seemed to him that the fire of rebellion was already burning in her eyes. "Let the world perish if only He will come!"
IV
The boat was brought to the gates of Khnum's garden by the Big Canal which united the southern part of the city with the north—Apet-Oisit, where the throne of the world, the Temple of Amon, stood.
Hearing that Tuta had put off his meeting with her for a few hours, Dio decided to pass these hours—perhaps the last—with Pentaur: she had not made up her mind yet whether she was going away the next day. She wanted, too, to say good-bye to Amon's Temple; she had grown to love this house of God, the largest and most beautiful in the world, because it was through it she had entered Egypt.
Surrounded by walls, three enormous sanctuaries of Amon, Khonsu, and Mut—the Father, the Son, and the Mother—towered above the endless multitude of low, grey, flat houses made of river mud, like swallows' nests. Within the walls there were copses, gardens, ponds, cattle-yards, cellars, granaries, breweries, perfumeries and other buildings, a town within the town, the City of God in the city of men.