at no plot
of ours can avail to separate these two who were born to each other,
although it well may happen that we shall unite them in death alone.
Issachar," he added with fierce conviction, "I will not take your gold,
for it is the price of blood! I tell you it is the price of blood!"

"Take it or no, as you will, Phoenician," answered the Levite; "at least
I am well pleased that the promise of it bought your service. Even
should the prince Aziel discharge this day's work with his young life,
it is better that he should perish in the body than that he should lose
his soul for the bribe of a woman's passing beauty. Whatever else be
lost, that is saved to him, since those sorceress lips of hers are set
beyond his reach. An Israelite cannot mate with the oracle of Baaltis,
Metem."

"You say so, Issachar, but I have seen men climb high to pluck such
fruit. Yes, I have seen them climb even when they knew that they must
fall before the fruit was reached."

Then he went also, leaving Issachar alone and oppressed with a dread of
the future which was none the less real because it could not be defined.

CHAPTER X

THE EMBASSY

Weak as she was still with recent illness, half-fainting also from
the shock of the terrible and unexpected fate which had overtaken her,
Elissa was borne in triumph to the palace that now was hers. Around
her gilded litter priestesses danced and sang their wild chants,
half-bacchanalian and half-religious; before it marched the priests of
El, clashing cymbals and crying, "Make way, make way for the new-born
goddess! Make way for her whose throne is upon the horned moon!" while
all about the multitude of spectators prostrated themselves in worship.

Elissa was borne in triumph. Vaguely she heard the shouts and music,
dimly she saw the dancing-girls and the bowing crowds. But all the while
her heart was alive with pain and her brain, crushed beneath the menace
of this misery, could grasp nothing clearly save the completeness of
her loss. Loss! Yes, she was lost indeed. One short hour ago and she
was rejoicing in the presence of the man she loved, and who, as she
believed, loved her, while in her mind rose visions of some happy life
with him far away from this city and the dark rites of the worshippers
of Baal. And now she found herself the chief priestess of that worship
which already she had learned to fear if not to hate. More, as its
priestess, till death should come to comfort her, she was