natural splendor filled her
eyes. "I," she continued, "am her priestess. I sacrificed at Byblus, but
you may sacrifice here. There is a dovecote, yonder is a cistern, beyond
are the cypress and the evergreens that she loves. Mary, do you wish to be
immortal? Do you see the way?"

Mary smiled vaguely, and with the serenity of one worshipping a divinity
she suffered the fat Jerusalemite to take her in his arms.

And now as she lay on her great couch these things returned to her, and
subsequent episodes as well. There had been the lamentable grief of
Martha, the added pathos in her brother's eyes. The estate of her father
had been divided, and the castle of Magdala had fallen to her share.
Meanwhile she had been at Jerusalem, and from there she had journeyed to
Antioch, where she had heard the beasts roar in the arena. She had looked
on blood, on the honey-colored moon that effaced the stars, and everywhere
she had encountered love.

Since then her hours had been grooved in revolving circles of alternating
delights, and delights to which no shadow of regret had come. To her,
youth had been a chalice of aromatic wine. She had drained it and found no
dregs. Day had been interwoven with splendors, and night with the rays of
the sun. Where she passed she conquered; when she smiled there were slaves
ready-made. There had been hot brawls where she trod, the gleam of white
knives. Men had killed each other because of her eyes, and women had wept
themselves to death. For her a priest had gone mad, and a betrothed had
hid herself in the sea. In Hierapolis the galli had fancied her Ashtaroth;
and at Capri, where Tiberius lounged, a villa awaited her will.

Her life had indeed been full, yet that morning its nausea had mounted to
her heart. At the words of the rabbi the horizon had expanded, the dream
of immortality returned. It had been forgot long since and abandoned, but
now, for the first time since her childhood, something there was which
admonished her that perhaps she still might stroll through lands where
dreams come true. The path was not wholly clear as yet, and as in her
troubled mind she tried to disentangle the past from the present the sun
went down behind the castle, the crouching shadows elongated and possessed
the walls.

An echo came to her, Repent, and the prophecy continuing danced in her
ears; yet still the way was obscure. In the echo she divined merely that
the past must be put from her like a garment that