has builded the world of love and wisdom,
woman and man; truly to live they must unite, she yielding herself to
his form, he moulding himself of her substance. As love unquickened by
wisdom is barren, and knowledge impotent unkindled by affection, so
are the unmarried lifeless.

Ill and bitter was it, therefore, for Manetho and Salome, after the
married ones had departed, taking their happiness with them. The
priest's, eyes were dry and dull, as he leaned wearily against the
smoking altar.

"You did not speak!" he said to the woman; "you saw her betrayed to
ruin and pollution, and spoke not to save her!--Dumb? the dead might
have moved their tongues in such need as this! She will abhor and
curse me forever! may you share her curse weighted with mine!--O
Gnulemah!"--

Salome cowered and trembled in her satin dress, beneath the burden of
that heavy anathema. She had risen that day determined to reveal the
secret of her life before night. She had been awaiting a favorable
moment, but opportunity or decision still had failed her.
Nevertheless, another morning should not find her the same nameless,
forsaken creature that she was now.--Manetho had bowed his face upon
the altar, and so remained without movement. With one hand fumbling at
the bosom of her dress--(the scar of her lover's blow should be the
talisman to recall his allegiance),--Salome made bold to approach him
and timidly touch his arm.

"Unhand me! whatever you are,--devil! my time is not yet come!"

He raised a threatening arm, with a gleam of mad ferocity beneath his
brows. But the woman did not shrink; the man was her god, and she
preferred death at his hands to life without him. Ignorant of the
cause of her firmness, it seemed to cow him. He slunk behind the
altar, hurriedly unlocked the secret door, and let himself into the
study. His haste had left the key in the lock outside. The door
slammed together, the spring-bolt caught, and the swathed head of old
Hiero Glyphic shook as though the cold of twenty winters had come on
him at once.

XXXII.

SHUT IN.

Left alone, Salome was taken with a panic; she fancied herself
deserted in a giant tomb, with dead men gathering about her. She
herself was in truth the grisliest spectre there, in her white satin
gown and feathers, and the horror of her hideous face. But she took to
flight, and the key remained unnoticed in the lock.

We, however, must spend an hour with Manetho in his narrow and
priso