“Men do not often show their hearts so clearly,” she answered with sarcasm. “But now, lords, I will guide you to the city before more harm befalls us, for this dead man may have companions.”
“Our mules are here, lady; will you not ride mine?” asked Aziel.
“I thank you, Prince, but my feet will carry me.”
“And so will mine,” said Aziel, ceasing from a prolonged and fruitless effort to loosen his sword from the breast-bone of the savage, “on such paths they are safer than any beasts. Friend, will you lead my mule with yours?”
“Ay, Prince,” grumbled Metem, “for so the world goes with the old; you take the fair lady for company and I a she-ass. Well, of the two give me the ass which is more safe and does not chatter.”
Then they started, Aziel leaving his short sword in the keeping of the dead man.
“How are you named, lady?” he said presently, adding “or rather I need not ask; you are Elissa, the daughter of Sakon, Governor of Zimboe, are you not?”
“I am so called, though how you know it I cannot guess.”
“I heard you name yourself, lady, in the prayer you made before the altar.”
“You heard my prayer, Prince?” she said starting. “Do you not know that it is death to that man who hearkens to the prayer of a priestess of Baaltis, uttered in her holy grove? Still, none know it save the goddess, who sees all, therefore I beseech you for your own sake and the sake of your companion, say nothing of it in the city, lest it should come to the ears of the priests of El.”
“Certainly it would have been death to you had I not chanced to hear it, having lost my way in the darkness,” answered the prince laughing. “Well, since I did hear it I will add that it was a beautiful prayer, revealing a heart high and pure, though I grieve that it should have been offered to one whom I hold to be a demon.”
“I am honoured,” she answered coldly; “but, Prince, you forget that though you, being a Hebrew, worship Him they call Jehovah, or so I have been told, I, being of the blood of the Sidonians, worship the lady Baaltis, the Queen of Heaven the holy one of whom I am a priestess.”
“So it is, alas!” he said, with a sigh, adding:—
“Well, let us not dispute of these matters, though, if you wish, the prophet Issachar, the Levite who accompanies me, can explain the truth of them to you.”
Elissa made no reply, and for a while they walked on in silence.
“Who was that black robber whom I slew?” Aziel asked presently.
“I am not sure, Prince,” she answered, hesitating, “but savages such as he haunt the outskirts of the city seeking to steal white women to be their wives. Doubtless he watched my steps, following me into the holy place.”
“Why, then, did you venture there alone, lady?”
“Because, to be heard, such prayers as mine must be offered in solitude in the consecrated grove, and at the hour of the rising of the moon. Moreover, cannot Baaltis protect her priestess, Priest, and did she not protect her?”
“I thought, lady, that I had something to do with the matter,” he answered.
“Ay, Prince, it was your hand that struck the blow which killed the thief, but Baaltis, and no other, led you to the place to rescue me.”
“I understand, lady. To save you, Baaltis, laying aside her own power, led a mortal man to the grove, which it is death that mortal man should violate.”
“Who can fathom the way of the gods?” she replied with passion, then added, as though reasoning with a new-born doubt, “Did not the goddess hear my prayer and answer it?”
“In truth, lady, I cannot say. Let me think. If I understood you rightly, you prayed for heavenly wisdom, but whether or not you have gained it within this last hour, I do not know. And then you prayed for love, an immortal love. O, maiden, has it come to you since yonder moon appeared upon the sky? And you prayed——”
“Peace!” she broke in, “peace and mock me not, or, prince that you are, I will publish your crime of spying upon the prayer of a priestess of Baaltis. I tell you that I prayed for a symbol and a sign, and the prayer was answered.
“Did not the black giant spring upon me to bear me away to be his slave—his, or another’s? And is he not a symbol of the evil and the ignorance which are on the earth and that seek to drag down the beauty and the wisdom of the earth to their own level? Then the Phoenician ran to rescue me and was defeated, since the spirit of Mammon cannot overcome the black powers of ill. Next you came and fought hard and long, till in the end you slew the mighty foe, you a Prince born of the royal blood of the world——” and she ceased.
“You have a pretty gift of parable, lady, as it should be with one who interprets the oracles of a goddess. But you have not told me of what I, your servant, am the symbol.”
She stopped in her walk and looked him full in the face.
“I never heard,” she said, “that either the Jews or the Egyptians, being instructed, were blind to the reading of an allegory. But, Prince, if you cannot read this one it is not for me, who am but a woman, to set it out to you.”
Just then their glances met, and in the clear moonlight Aziel saw a wave of doubt sweep over his companion’s dark and beautiful eyes, and a faint flush appear upon her brow. He saw, and something stirred at his heart that till this hour he had never felt, something which even now he knew it would trouble him greatly to escape.
“Tell me, lady,” he asked, his voice sinking almost to a whisper, “in this fable of yours am I even for an hour deemed worthy to play the part of that immortal love embodied which you sought so earnestly a while ago?”
“Immortal love, Prince,” she answered, in a new voice, a voice low and deep, “is not for one hour, but for all hours that are and are to be. You, and you alone, can know if you would dare to play such a part as this—even in a fable.”
“Perchance, lady, there lives a woman for whom it might be dared.”
“Prince, no such woman lives, since immortal love must deal, not with the flesh, but with the spirit. If a spirit worthy to be thus loved and worshipped now wanders in earthly shape upon the world, seeking its counterpart and its completion, I cannot tell. Yet were it so, and should they chance to meet, it might be happy for such brave spirits, for then the answer to the great riddle would be theirs.”
Wondering what this riddle might be, Aziel bent towards her to reply, when suddenly round a bend in the path but a few paces from them came a body of soldiers and attendants, headed by a man clad in a white robe and walking with a staff. This man was grey-headed and keen-eyed, thin in face and ascetic in appearance, with a brow of power and a bearing of dignity. At the sight of the pair he halted, looking at them in question, and with disapproval.
“Our search is ended,” he said in Hebrew, “for here is he whom we seek, and alone with him a heathen woman, robed like a priestess of the Groves.”
“Whom do you seek, Issachar?” asked Aziel hurriedly, for the sudden appearance of the Levite disturbed him.
“Yourself, Prince. Surely you can guess that your absence has been noted. We feared lest harm should have come to you, or that you had lost your path, but it seems that you have found a guide,” and he stared at his companion sternly.
“That guide, Issachar,” answered Aziel, “being none other than the lady Elissa, daughter of Sakon, governor of this city, and our host, whom it has been my good fortune to rescue from a woman-stealer yonder in the grove of the goddess Baaltis.”
“And whom it was my bad fortune to try to rescue in the said grove, as my broken head