rhythmic dance, placed her feet wide apart, and without
bending the knees, suddenly swayed her lithe body downward, so that her
chin touched the floor; and her whole audience,--the nomads, accustomed
to a life of privation and abstinence, the Roman soldiers, expert in
debaucheries, the avaricious publicans, and even the crabbed, elderly
priests--gazed upon her with dilated nostrils.

Next she began to whirl frantically around the table where Antipas the
tetrarch was seated. He leaned towards the flying figure, and in a voice
half choked with the voluptuous sighs of a mad desire, he sighed: "Come
to me! Come!" But she whirled on, while the music of dulcimers swelled
louder and the excited spectators roared their applause.

The tetrarch called again, louder than before: "Come to me! Come! Thou
shalt have Capernaum, the plains of Tiberias! my citadels! yea, the half
of my kingdom!"

Again the dancer paused; then, like a flash, she threw herself upon the
palms of her hands, while her feet rose straight up into the air. In
this bizarre pose she moved about upon the floor like a gigantic beetle;
then stood motionless.

The nape of her neck formed a right angle with her vertebrae. The full
silken skirts of pale hues that enveloped her limbs when she stood
erect, now fell to her shoulders and surrounded her face like a rainbow.
Her lips were tinted a deep crimson, her arched eyebrows were black
as jet, her glowing eyes had an almost terrible radiance; and the tiny
drops of perspiration on her forehead looked like dew upon white marble.

She made no sound; and the burning gaze of that multitude of men was
concentrated upon her.

A sound like the snapping of fingers came from the gallery over the
pavilion. Instantly, with one of her movements of bird-like swiftness,
Salome stood erect. The next moment she rapidly passed up a flight of
steps leading to the gallery, and coming to the front of it she leaned
over, smiled upon the tetrarch, and, with an air of almost childlike
naivete, pronounced these words:

"I ask my lord to give me, placed upon a charger, the head of--" She
hesitated, as if not certain of the name; then said: "The head of
Iaokanann!"

The tetrarch sank back in his chair as if stunned.

He had bound himself by his promise to her; and the people awaited his
next movement. But the death that night of some conspicuous man that had
been predicted to him by Phanuel,--what if, by bringing it upon another,
he