She got up from the bed and went to the harp. The strings continued vibrating quietly but clearly. Something living was fluttering down below. Dio looked down and saw a bat that was caught in the network of the crossed strings and was struggling against them.
Dio smiled bitterly and regretted the terror of the moment ago. The wall of death rose between them more impenetrable than ever, the dead went further away into death, as though he had died again.
She carefully released the captive, kissed it on the head and, climbing on to a chair, let it out of the long and narrow window right up by the ceiling.
She returned to her bed, lay down and sank at once into the deep heavy sleep of grief.
"Get up, my dear, get up, it is time to go," she heard Zenra's voice over her.
"To go? Where?" she muttered without opening her eyes.
"To the City of the Sun. Tuta is going to-day and we go with him. Come, wake up, sleepy head!"
Dio opened her eyes. The light was still dim in the windows: the sun had not yet risen. But a sudden joy flooded her like sunlight. It seemed she had only now understood what it meant—"Akhnaton, the Joy of the Sun!"
She dressed quickly and ran up to the roof.
The winter morning was still and misty and its stillness seemed to say that the riot was over, the earth had not turned upside down, but stood firmly and would go on doing so for a long time yet. Everything was as usual: two white turtle-doves were cooing in the garden under the black feathery cedar tree; the morning sounds, slightly muffled by the fog, were wafted from afar over the water of the canal: the braying of the donkey, the creaking of the water-raising wheels, the clatter of the laundry bats and the mournful droning song: