But with the morning light, how bitter was the sight which burst on her aching eyes! All had been as desolate long before; but she had never seen it as she saw it now. Noisome beasts, which prowled fearlessly around her; skulls and ghastly skeletons of their murdered prey strewn about; on the ground the broken, rusted harp; on her hands the heavy chain; and, worse than all, the door she had opened to the Enemy ever open, and inviting his approach.
Too surely he came. He mocked her hope until it appeared baseless as a dream; and nothing seemed real, but the ruin to which he scornfully directed her gaze, and the chain which now, for the first time without concealment, he held up triumphantly, dragging her by it to every corner of the polluted and ruined temple, to show her how complete and hopeless the ruin was. Then drawing the links tighter than before, so that they galled and wounded her wrists, he led her to the image of herself, which he had adorned, and painted, and so often flattered. He dragged off the tinsel ornaments, and effaced the delusive colouring, and left her, at last, face to face with the defaced and broken idol, saying—
"This is the worship you yourself have chosen. Pursue it still. There is no other for you."
She could not bear to gaze on it; and as he went, she fell prostrate on the altar steps, and hid her face on the stones. Yet still, though with but a feeble hope, she sobbed out—
"If thou art good—if thou canst help me, come,—oh, come, and set me free!"
Weariness at last brought sleep, and in her dreams she saw a lovely vision of the temple as it once had been. White columns gleamed, sweet and solemn music sounded, and she herself ministered in white robes at the altar, before a Radiant Form, on which she could scarcely for a moment gaze.
The awaking from this dream to the desolation around her was more terrible than all she had felt before. It must have bereft her of reason, but for the echo of three cheering words, which seemed to have awakened her—
"I will come."
The next day, with the light of that radiant vision on her heart, she dragged her fettered limbs to the altar, and strove with her feeble and trembling hands to tear that marred image from the shrine. But in vain. It was too firmly imbedded there; and she could only turn her face from it, and weep, and cry for help.
And before the next morning's dawn, help came.