Thou knowest such a proceeding will defile us." Nefert looked pleadingly at Bent-Anat, but the princess repeated her command.
"Go before me; I have no fear of defilement." The Mohar still hesitated.
"Wilt thou provoke the Gods ?--and defile thyself ?" But the princess let him say no more; she signed to Nefert, who raised her hands in horror and aversion; so, with a shrug of her shoulders, she left her companion behind with the Mohar, and stepped through an opening in the hedge into a little court, where lay two brown goats; a donkey with his forelegs tied together stood by, and a few hens were scattering the dust about in a vain search for food.
Soon she stood, alone, before the door of the paraschites' hovel.

No one perceived her, but she could not take her eyes-accustomed only to scenes of order and splendor--from the gloomy but wonderfully strange picture, which riveted her attention and her sympathy.

At last she went up to the doorway, which was too low for her tall figure.

Her heart shrunk painfully within her, and she would have wished to grow smaller, and, instead of shining in splendor, to have found herself wrapped in a beggar's robe.
Could she step into this hovel decked with gold and jewels as if in mockery ?--like a tyrant who should feast at a groaning table and compel the starving to look on at the banquet.

Her delicate perception made her feel what trenchant discord her appearance offered to all that surrounded her, and the discord pained her; for she could not conceal from herself that misery and external meanness were here entitled to give the key-note and that her magnificence derived no especial grandeur from contrast with all these modest accessories, amid dust, gloom, and suffering, but rather became disproportionate and hideous, like a giant among pigmies.
She had already gone too far to turn back, or she would willingly have done so.