"That is the very reason."
"Although I enjoy the favour of the Pharaoh, although I am the steward of his domains and wear gilded horns in the festivals of agriculture, I cannot rise to you. In the eyes of the Egyptians I am but a slave, and you belong to the priestly caste, the highest and most venerated. If you love me—and I cannot doubt that you do—you must give up your rank."
"Have I not already become your servant? Hora kept nothing of Tahoser, not even the enamelled collars and the transparent gauze calasiris; that is why you thought me ugly."
"You will have to give up your country and follow me to unknown regions, through the desert where burns the sun, where blows the fire-wind, where the moving sand tangles and effaces the paths, where no tree grows, where no well springs, through the lost valleys of death strewn with whitened bones that mark the way."
"I shall go," said Tahoser, quietly.
"That is not all," continued Poëri. "Your gods are not mine,—your gods of brass, basalt, and granite, fashioned by the hand of man, your monstrous idols with heads of eagle, monkey, ibis, cow, jackal, and lion, which assume the faces of beasts as if they were troubled by the human face on which rests the reflection of Jehovah. It is said, 'Thou shalt worship neither stone nor wood nor metal.' Within these temples cemented with the blood of oppressed races grin and crouch the hideous, foul demons which usurp the libations, the offerings, and the sacrifices. One only God, infinite, eternal, formless, colourless, fills the immensity of the heavens which you people with a multitude of phantoms. Our God has created us; you have created your gods."
Although Tahoser was deeply in love with Poëri, his words affected her strangely, and she drew back in terror. The daughter of the high-priest had been brought up to venerate the gods whom the young Hebrew was boldly blaspheming; she had offered up on their altars bouquets of flowers, and she had burned perfumes before their impassible images; amazed and delighted, she had walked through their temples splendid with brilliant paintings. She had seen her father performing the mysterious rites; she had followed the procession of priests who bore the symbolic bari through the enormous pylons and the endless sphinx avenues; she had admired tremblingly the psychostasis where the trembling soul appears before Osiris armed with the whip and the pedum, and she had noted with a dreamy glance the frescoes representing the emblematic figures travelling towards the regions of the West. She could not thus yield up all her beliefs. She was silent for a few moments, hesitating between religion and love. Love won the day, and she said:
"You shall tell me of your God; I will try to understand him."
"It is well," said Poëri; "you shall be my wife. Meanwhile remain here, for the Pharaoh, no doubt in love with you, is having you sought everywhere by his emissaries. He will never discover you under this humble roof, and in a few days we shall be out of his power. But the night is waning and I must depart."
Poëri went off, and the two young women, lying side by side on the soft bed, soon fell asleep, holding each other's hands like two sisters.