"Look! Look, sweet god," she cried. "This I offer thee—a treasure given by a great Armenian prince. Soften thy heart and I cast it into the deepest waters of thy lake, where none may find it and dispoil thee of my gift."
True, Semiramis herself might dive and recover it at will, albeit she hoped a point so trifling might escape the god. Yet, lest the thought occur to him, she hastened on:
"Knowest thou not the value of such pearls? With a single bead thou couldst buy an hundred Habals for thine altar's needs. Think, then, what all would mean—they are twice a score—and I give them for the life of this one poor youth, whom me-thinks is of common blood and lowly born. Heed, wise one, and hasten, lest wisdom tempt me and I keep my pearls."
A shaft of sunlight filtered through the thick leaved palms, wavered, and crawled across the temple's floor; for an instant it rested on a tangle of blazing hair, then slowly climbed the fish-god's scaly side. As the maiden watched, with parted lips, with bosom fluttering to a quickened pulse, the flame of sunlight flickered and went out. Yet at her choking cry, it leaped to life again, to splash the face of Dagon with a leering glow of happiness—and Menon groaned and stirred.
While one might count a score, the girl leaned, limp and nerveless, on Dagon's altar stone; then she cast aside the blistered cat's paw of divine appeal and set in its place a swift, more vigorous god of force. With a zeal of hope she fell upon the body of her charge in all the strength her wild, free life had built, till Menon's eyelids fluttered and a frown of half unconscious protest ridged his brow. In the twilight of understanding, he fancied himself an ill used prisoner in the hands of enemies who mauled him from neck to heel; and when with returning life came an agony of water-laden lungs that labored to be free, he turned on his side and muttered curses, deep, fervent, touched by the fires of poesy.
It was then, then only, that the toil of Semiramis gave place to indolence. She rested her chin upon her knees and listened to the music of his oaths—music far sweeter than the liquid notes of shepherd's flutes, or the echoes of sheep bells tinkling through the dusk. A seed of love had broken from its strange, unharrowed soil, and the bud had opened to look upon its god.
With a sigh of peace she rose and clothed herself in the robe of fine spun wool, clasped tight her girdle and strapped the sandal thongs about her feet; then she rested Menon's head upon her lap and forced between his teeth the rim of a wine cup of which she recklessly deprived great Dagon's shrine.
"Dagon and I," she murmured, with an impish smile, "have compassed much; yet Dagon alone, without the measure of my aid—"
She paused, for a young cloud slid across the sun, flinging a shadow on the temple floor, a shadow which crept and crept till the fish-god's visage darkened with its gloom; then Semiramis remembered, rose, and cast her pearls far out into the lake.
Once more she sat beside her charge, chafing his temples with a patient, lingering caress. Long, long she watched, her fancy looming lace-work webs of fate, while her heart marked joyfully his battle with reluctant life; till, presently, his breath flowed gently and the sweat of pain was dried upon his brow.