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"Now?" repeated Tabus in surprise, letting her gaze rest inquiringly upon the girl Then she took the spit frorily: "Directly, do you mean? As if that could be! As if the stars obeyed us mortals like maids or men servants! The moon must be at the full to learn the truth fro? Only have patience, girl! True, fe to practise this art at your age, and it is alien to many all their lives But the stars! Froo his way patiently, year by year Always the same course and the same pace No deviation even one hair's breadth, no swifter or slowerwanderers

No sudden wrath, no ardent desire, no weariness or aversion urges or delays thereat law until the end of all things What they appoint for this hour is for it alone, not for the next one Everything in the vast universe is connected with them Whoever should delay their course a ht would become day, the rivers would return to their sources People would walk on their heads instead of their feet, joy would be transformed to sorrow and power to servitude Therefore, child, the fullone during the other twenty-nine nights of the s to another is to expect an answer froe How young you are, child, and how foolish! To question the cords for you in the rapes from thorns Take my word for that!"

Here she interrupted the words uttered with so much difficulty, and with her blackish-blue cotton dress wiped her perspiring face, strangely flushed by the exertion and the firelight

Ledscha had listened with increasing disappointht, yet before she ventured to the sculptor's workshop the next day she must know at every cost how matters stood, what she had to fear or to hope from him; so after a brief silence she ventured to ask the question, "But are there only the stars and the cords which predict what fate holds in store for one who is so nearly allied to you?"

"No, child, no," was the reply "But nothing can be clone about looking into the future now It requires rigid fasting frohtducks, too, and then--it ht your people will be anxious if you are not at home by that time, or perhaps send a slave to seek you here at my house, and that--that must not be done--I must prevent it"