ward,
upon the curtains, scarce stirring from the touch of the queen's
beautiful hands. Once, almost in jest, submitting to a momentary
caprice, she had made Eliab to pass a whole night of felicity with her.
In the morning she had let him depart, but ever since, for many days
running, she had beheld everywhere,--in the palace, in the temple, in
the streets,--two enamoured, submissive, yearning eyes, that followed
her entranced.

The dark eyebrows of the queen contracted, and her green, elongated eyes
suddenly darkened from a fearful thought. With a barely perceptible
motion of her hand she ordered the castrate to lower the fan and said
quietly:

"Get hence, all of you. Hushai, thou shalt go and summon to me Eliab,
the officer of the king's guard. Let him come alone."

[Illustration]

CHAPTER ELEVEN

XI.

Ten priests, in white vestments, maculated with red, stepped out to the
centre of the altar. Following them came two other priests, clad in
feminine garments. It was their duty to-day to represent Nephthys and
Isis, bewailing Osiris. Then out of the depths of the altar came one in
a white chiton, without a single ornament, and the eyes of all the men
and women were eagerly drawn to him. This was the very same desert
anchorite who had undergone a heavy trial of ten years' wrestling with
the flesh upon the mountains of Lebanon, and was now to bring a great,
voluntary bloody sacrifice to Isis. His face, emaciated by hunger,
wind-beaten and scorched, was stern and pallid, the eyes austerely cast
down; and a supernatural horror was wafted from him upon the throng.

Finally, the chief priest of the temple also made his appearance,--a
centenarian ancient, with a tiara upon his head, with a tiger skin upon
his shoulders, in an apron of brocaded samite adorned with the tails of
jackals.

Turning to the worshippers, he uttered in a senile voice, meek and
tremulous:

"_Suton-di-botpu._" ("The king bringeth the sacrifice.")

And then, turning around to the sacrificial altar, he took from the
hands of an acolyte a white dove with little red feet, cut off the
bird's head, took the heart out of her breast, and sprinkled the
sacrificial altar and the consecrated knife with her blood.

After a brief silence he proclaimed:

"Let us weep for Osiris, the god of Atum, the Great On-Nefer-Hophra, the
god Ona!"

Two castrates in female garments,--Isis and Nephthys,--at once commenced
the lamentation, in harmonious, h