The bulk of the jar on the farther shoulder made it necessary for him to turn his face toward her, but she was uneasy under the intent gaze of his level black eyes. She dropped behind him, but he slackened his pace and kept beside her. For the moment he was no longer the man of pulse and susceptibility but the artist. Therefore her thoughts and sensations were apart from his concern. The unfamiliar perfection of the Semitic countenance bewildered him. He took up his panegyric. Never was a mortal countenance so near divine. And the sumptuousness of her figure—its faultless curves and lines, its lissome roundness, its young grace, the beauty of arm and neck and ankle! Ah! never did anything entirely earthly dwell in so fair, so splendid a form.
As they neared the camp the girl spoke to him for the first time. He recognized in her voice the same serene tone he had noted in his talk with the Hebrew some days before.
"Give me my burden now," she said. "Thou hast affronted thy rank for me, and I thank thee many times."
The sculptor paused and for a moment stood embarrassed. It went sorely against his gallantry to lay the burden again upon her and he said as much.
"Nay, Egypt has no qualms against loading the Hebrew," she said quietly. "Wouldst thou put thy nation to shame?"
Kenkenes opened his eyes in some astonishment.
"Now am I even more loath," he declared. "What art thou called?"
"Rachel."
"It hath an intrepid sound, but Athor would become thee better. Now I am a sculptor from the city, come to study thy women for a frieze," he continued unblushingly, "and I would go no farther in my search. Rachel repeated will be beauty multiplied. Let me see thee once in a while,—to-morrow."
A sudden flush swept over her face and her eyes darkened.