"Is not the hour come?" she cried joyously.

"Yea, the hour is come," he murmured.

"The hour of thy final trial and triumph! The longed-for hour of thy appearance before the Sultan, when thou wilt take the crown from his head and place it on--"

Instead of completing the sentence, she ran to take his head to her bosom. But he repulsed her embracing arms. She drew back in consternation. It was the first time she had known him rough, not only with her, but with any creature.

"Leave me! Leave me!" he cried huskily.

"Nay, thou needest me." And her forgiving arms spread towards him in fresh tenderness.

He looked at her without moving to meet them.

"Ay, I need thee," he said pathetically. "Therefore," and his voice rose firm again, "leave me to myself."

"Thou hast become a stranger," she said tremulously. "I do not understand thee."

"Would thou hadst ever been a stranger, that I had never understood thee."

"Sabbata, thou ravest."

"I have come to my senses. O my G.o.d! my G.o.d!" and he fell a-weeping on the divan.

Melisselda's alarm grew greater.

"Rouse thyself, they will hear thee."

"Let them hear. G.o.d hears me not."

"Hears thee not? Thou art He!"

"I G.o.d!" He laughed bitterly. "Thou believest that! Thou who knowest me man!"

"I know thee all divine. I have worshipped thee in joy. Art thou not Messiah?"

"Messiah! Who cannot save myself!"

"Who can hurt thee? Who hath ever hurt thee from thy youth up? The Angels watch over thy footsteps. Is not thy life one long miracle?"

He shook his head hopelessly. "All this year I have waited the miracle--all those weary months in the dungeon of Constantinople, in the Castle of Abydos--but what sure voice hath spoken? To-morrow I shall be disembowelled, lashed with fiery scourges--who knows what these dogs may do?"

"Hush! hush!"

"Ah, thou fearest for me!" he cried, in perverse triumph. "Thou knowest I am but mortal man!"

The roses of her beautiful cheek had faded, but she spoke, unflinching.

"Nay, I believe on thee still. I followed thee to thy prison, unwitting it would turn into a palace. I follow thee to thy torture to-morrow, trusting it will be the crowning miracle and the fiery scourges will turn into angels' feathers. It is the word of Zechariah fulfilled. 'In that day will I make the governors of Judah like an hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire in a sheaf.'"

His eyes grew humid as he looked up at her. "Yea, Melisselda, thou hast been true and of good courage. And now, when I am alone, when the shouts of the faithful have died away, when the King of the World lies here alone in darkness and ashes, thou hast faith still?"

"Ay, I believe--'tis but a trial, the final trial of my faith."

She smiled at him confidently; hope quickened within him. "If this were but a trial, the final trial of _my_ faith!" he murmured. "But no--ere that white strip of moon rises again in the heavens I shall be a mangled corpse, the feast of wolves, unless--I have prayed for a sign--oh, how I have prayed, and now--ah, see! A star is falling. O my G.o.d, that this should be the end of my long martyrdom! But the punishment of my arrogance is greater than I can bear. G.o.d, G.o.d, why didst Thou send me those divine-seeming whispers, those long, long thoughts that thrilled my soul? Why didst Thou show me the sin of Israel and his suffering, the sorrow and evil of the world, inspiring me to redeem and regenerate?" His breast swelled with hysteric sobs.

"My Sabbata!" Melisselda's warm arms were round him. He threw her off with violence. "Back, back!" he cried. "I understand the sign; I understand at last. 'Tis through thee that I have forfeited the divine grace."

"Through me?" she faltered.

"Yea; thy lips have wooed mine away from prayer, thine arms have drawn me down from the steeps of righteousness. Thou hast made me unfaithful to my bride, the Law. For nigh forty years I lived hard and lonely, steeped my body in ice and snow, lashed myself--ay, lashed myself, I who now fear the lash--till the blood ran from a dozen wounds, and now, O G.o.d! O G.o.d! Woman, thou hast polluted me! I have lost the divine spirit. It hath gone out from me; it will incarnate itself in another, in a n.o.bler. Once I was Messiah, now I am man."

"I?--I took from thee the divine spirit!"

She looked at him in all the flush of her beauty, grown insolent again.

He sprang up, he fell upon her breast, he kissed her lips madly.

"Nay, nay, thou hast shown it me! Love! Love! 'tis Love that breathes through all things, that lifts the burden of life. But for thee I should have pa.s.sed away, unknowing the glory of manhood. I am a man--a man rejoicing in his strength! O my starved youth! why did I not behold thee earlier?" Tears of self-pity rolled down his ashen cheek.

"O my love! my love! my lost youth! Give me back my youth, O G.o.d! Who am I, to save? A man; yea, a man, glorying in manhood. Ah! happy are they who lead the common fate of men, happy in love, in home, in children; woe for those who would climb, who would torture and deny themselves, who would save humanity? From what? If they have Love, have they not all? It is G.o.d, it is the Kingdom. It is the Kingdom.

Come, let us live--I a man, thou a woman!"

"But a Mussulman!"

"What imports? G.o.d is everywhere. Was not our Maimonides--he at whose tomb we worship in Tiberias--himself once a Mussulman? Did he not say that if it be to save our lives naught is forbidden?"

He moved to take her in his arms, but this time it was she that drew back. Her eyes flashed.

"Nay, as a man, I love thee not. Thou art divine or naught; G.o.d or Impostor!"

"Melisselda!" She ignored his stricken cry.

"Nay, this ordeal hath endured long enough," she replied sternly.

"Confess, I have been proof."

"I am neither G.o.d nor Impostor," he said brokenly. "Ah! say not that thou canst not love me as a man. When thou didst first come to bless my life I had not yet declared myself Messiah."

"Who knows what I thought then? A wild girl, crazed by the convent, by the blood shed before my childish eyes, I came to thee full of lawless pa.s.sions and fantastic dreams. But as I lived with thee, as I saw the beauty of thy thought, thy large compa.s.sion, the purity of thy life amid temptations that made me jealous as a woman of Damascus, then I knew thee a G.o.d indeed."

"Nay, when I knew thee I knew myself man. But as our followers grew, as faith and fortune trod in my footsteps, my blasphemous dream revived; I believed in thy vision of the Kingdom. When I divided the world I thought myself Messiah indeed. But as I sat on my throne at Abydos, with worshippers from the world's end kissing my feet, a hollow doubt came over me, a sense of dream, and hollow voices echoed ever in my ear, asking, 'Art thou Messiah? Art thou Messiah? Art thou Messiah?' I strove to drown them in the festive song; but in the stillness of the night, when thou wast sleeping at my side, the voices came back, and they cried mockingly, 'Man! Man! Man!' And when Nehemiah came--"

"Man!" interrupted Melisselda impatiently. "Cease to cozen me. Have I not known men? Ay, who more? Their weaknesses, their vanities, their lewdnesses--enough! To-morrow thou shalt a.s.sert the G.o.d."

He threw himself back on the divan and sighed wearily. "Leave me, Melisselda. Go to thy rest; to-night I must keep vigil alone.

Perchance it is my last night on earth."

Her countenance lit up. "Yea, to-morrow comes the Kingdom of Heaven."

And smiling ineffable trust, she stooped down and lightly kissed his hair, then glided from the room.