"This day will seal my fate, O my sister!" said Azora, mournfully. Her friend said nothing in reply, but her habitual smile forsook her now sorrowful face, and tears stood in her eyes.
"Why are you so kind to me?" Azora continued, embracing her. "To part from you will more embitter the cup that I must drink."
"Oh, say not you will leave me," said Oom-el-Zin, throwing her arms around Azora, "you make me shudder when you talk of death, and yet I begin to believe you are in earnest. But no! you can not—you dare not—die!"
"The God of Israel will support me in death," said Azora, solemnly. "A few short years, and who, of all those who now behold my doom, will be alive to tell how died the Hebrew girl?—and shall I barter an eternity, compared to which centuries are but as those glittering drops of water to the firmament they mock, for power to drag out my few remaining years in guilt and infamy? What can I not dare for the love of God, to whom I owe all? and when His hand is heavy upon me, shall I not say, with the Arabian patriarch—'The Lord hath given—the Lord hath taken—blessed be the Lord.'"
"Talk not so, O dear, dear Azora! I would rather live out my life in a prison, without the light of day, only I would not die. Oh, we will be so happy here together! Oh, you cannot sacrifice yourself—you, so young, so beautiful; you make me so miserable. Oh, live! and stay with us." But in vain the tearful eye of the affectionate girl looked for a kindred feeling in the face of the enthusiastic Jewess.
"Alas! for you, my dear girl," she said; "did you possess the hope of a glorious future, you would not dread that which must, sooner or later, come to all.—But lo! we are called. The hour is come."
They arose to return, as one of the women attendants had come to summon Azora to the Sultan's presence.
"I almost distrust my own weak heart," she continued; "but the Lord of Hosts is my strength, the God of Israel is my refuge."
Tenderly embracing her weeping and disconsolate companion, she accompanied the messenger, and was conducted to the same apartment that had been the scene of her previous trial.
The short period that had intervened—but which to her had been an age of mental suffering—showed its influence on her frame; her pale cheeks witnessed to the anguish that had preyed on her soul; but now they flushed with a hectic glow, from the strong temporary excitement of her position, and her beauty was not the less transcendent.