arrow gate of the temple. Along this
lane advanced a procession of the priests of El clad in red robes, with
tall red caps upon their heads, beneath which their straight hair hung
down to their shoulders. In their hands were gilded rods, and round
their necks hung golden chains, to which were attached emblems of the
god they worshipped. They walked two-and-two to the number of fifty,
chanting a melancholy dirge, one hand of each priest resting upon his
fellow's shoulder, and as they passed, with the exception of certain
Jews, all the spectators uncovered, while some of the more pious of them
even fell upon their knees.

After the priests came a second procession, that of the priestesses
of Baaltis. These women, who numbered at least a hundred, were clad
in white, and wore upon their heads a gauze-like veil that fell to the
knees, and was held in place by a golden fillet surmounted with the
symbol of a crescent moon. Instead of the golden rods, however, each of
them held in her left hand a growing stalk of maize, from the sheathed
cob of which hung the bright tassel of its bloom. On her right wrist,
moreover, a milk-white dove was fastened by a wire, both corn and dove
being tokens of that fertility which, under various guises, was the real
object of worship of these people. The sight of these white-veiled women
about whose crescent-decked brows the doves fluttered, wildly striving
to be free, was very strange and beautiful as they advanced also singing
a low and melancholy chant. Aziel searched their faces with his eyes
while they passed slowly towards him, and presently his heart bounded,
for there among them, clasping the dove she bore to her breast, as
though to still its frightened strugglings, was the Lady Elissa. He
noticed, too, that as she went beneath the palace walls, she glanced
at the window-place of his chamber, but without seeing him for he was
seated in the shadow.

Presently the long line of priestesses, followed by hundreds of
worshippers, had vanished through the tortuous and narrow entrance of
the temple, and Aziel leaned back to think.

There, among the principal votaries of a goddess, the wickedness of
whose worship was a scandal and a by-word even in the ancient world,
walked the woman to whom he felt so strangely drawn and with whom,
if there were any truth in the visions of Issachar and the mysterious
warnings of his own soul, his fate was intertwined. As he thought of it
a sudden revulsion fi