Treading lightly that they might not awake the sleeper, the two crept up the stair, not without many a fearful backward glance at the quiet figure which still lay on its face, the monstrous staring eyes of the mummies looking on unmoved, and the stealthy wind already beginning to urge the uneasy desert to "Come, cover this man that hath lain him down to sleep unasked in the abode of kings!"
"Shall I put the stone in its place?" said Seth, when they had reached the upper air.
"Yes," said the girl, clenching her thin hands. "Let him bide there till the other shall seek him, and if that be never, then I care not. Would he not have left us to perish? But the gods stayed his hand."
"Fetch him water then and food also if thou wilt. Thou art soft-hearted; for myself I should leave him as he is. Dost thou not see that it is now that we must make good our escape? Once the man hath recovered himself we are lost. I can hear the bells of his beast, let us seize it and flee away into the desert that we may find the magician who can open the eyes of them that see not."
"We could not pass the wilderness, we should perish by the way."
Anat sat down in the sand. "Thou art a man," she said scornfully, "and therefore wise; I am as the dust under thy feet; I have no eyes to see with, yet shall I tell thee what shall come to pass. Go down now to our enemy whom the gods have smitten, raise him up and pour water into his mouth and upon his head, then when he shall come to himself say to him, ’Here now is thy beast, I will set thee upon it that thou mayest ride. As for this maid whom thou didst covet, behold she is thine; I also will run before thee.’" And the girl laughed aloud, and tossed her head so that all the gold and silver coins of her necklace clinked musically together.
Seth looked at her indignantly. "All women have the poison of asps under their tongues," he muttered. "It hath been told me, and it is even true, I have seen men beat their women for less; it purgeth them from folly."
The blind girl sprang to her feet. "Wilt thou beat me because I have proved that thou art the fool?" she cried, her voice choking with rage. "Yes, let it be so, I care not, but I had thought that thou wast not as others--that thou didst love me, blind, useless, helpless though I be," and she burst into a passion of weeping.