Lives of Alcyone

Life XLIII
We find ourselves once more in that most wonderful of the old
civilisations which had its seat on the banks of the Nile. It was in the
reign of the Pharaoh Unas, the last sovereign of the fifth dynasty
which ruled over the joyous sons of mighty Khem, that Alcyone was
born as the daughter of Ajax and Bellatrix. Her name was Hatshepu.
Her father was the nextdoor neighbour of a great Court official,
named Anarseb (Markab), and Markab’ s eldest son was Sirius,
whose name this time was Menka. The comradeship of previous
lives soon asserted itself, and Sirius and Alcyone, being playmates,
became much attached to each other.
Alcyone’ s elder brother Uranus was very kind to them, and
gave up much time to teaching them various things. Demeter,
another little girl about the same age, a cousin of Alcyone, was also
a great friend—a partially clairvoyant child who had wonderful
visions. Sirius and Alcyone liked to listen to the descriptions of what
she saw, and Alcyone was several times able to see these things
too, by touching Demeter. Sirius could not do this, so the girls told
him that boys were not fit for such privileges, being too coarse and
masculine!
They played together amidst the lovely gardens for which
Egypt was so famous—gardens which contained cleverly arranged
artificial hills, dales and lakes. There was water everywhere,
surrounded often by marble or polished granite steps and pillars;
there were flowers growing on every foot of grass and hanging over