ids were steel bows,
But her mouth was a rose,
Melisselda.

_But her mouth was a rose._ Ah, God, the pity of it, to leave the rose
for the crown of thorns!

"Melisselda!" he cried, with a sob. "Have pity on me."

The door opened; two of the Imperial Guards appeared.

"Thou slayest me," he said in Hebrew.

"I worship thee," she answered him, in the same sacred tongue. Her
face took on its old confident smile.

"But I am a man."

Once again her lids were steel bows.

"Then die like a man! Thinkst thou I would share thy humiliation? If I
am to be a Moslem's bride, let me be the Sultan's. If I am not to
share the Messiah's throne, let me share an Emperor's. Thy Spanish
song made me an Emperor's daughter--I will be an Emperor's consort."

And she laughed wantonly.

The guards advanced timidly with visible awe. Melisselda's swiftly
flashing face changed suddenly. She drew him to her breast.

"My King!" she murmured. "'Twas cruel to tempt my faith thus." Then
releasing him, she cried, "Go to thy Kingdom."

He drew himself up; the fire in her eyes flashed into his own.

"The Sultan summons thee," said one of the guards reverently.

"I am ready," he said, calmly adjusting the folds of his black mantle.

Melisselda was left alone. The slow moments wore on, tense and
terrible. Little by little the radiant faith died out of her face.
Half an hour went by, and cold serpents of doubt began to coil about
her own heart.

What if Sabbatai were only a man after all? With frenzied rapidity she
reviewed the past; now she glowed with effulgent assurances of his
divinity, the homage of his people, the awe of Turk and Christian,
Rabbis and sages at his feet, the rich and the great struggling to
kiss his fan, the treasures poured into his unwilling palms; now she
shivered with hideous suggestions and remembrances of frailty and
mortal ineptitude. And as her faith faltered, as the exaltation, with
which she had inspired him, ebbed away, alarm for his safety began to
creep into her soul, till at last it was as a flood sweeping her in
his traces. And the more her fears swelled the more she realized how
much she had grown to love him, with his sad, dark, smooth-skinned
beauty, the soft, almost magnetic touch of his hand. Messiah or man,
she loved him: he was right. What if she had sent him to his death! A
cold, sick horror crept about her limbs. Perhaps he had dared to put
his divinity to the test, and th