"Where?"
"Outside the Damascus Gate--they are stoning him!"
Anat stood for an instant like some beautiful soulless statue of despair. Then a wild fire leapt to her eyes.
"Tell them!" she said, and fled away out of the open door, away--away toward the Damascus Gate.
Women stared after her, men stretched forth their hands to grasp her, but she heeded them not; her feet seemed leaden, the minutes hours. The Damascus Gate--would she ever reach it? Again and again Ben Obed's awful cry sounded in her ears:
"My God! they are killing him!"
The gate--the gate at last; but it is choked with people coming in. Men, she dimly saw, men with long robes and broad phylacteries; men to whom the gate-keepers did reverence while they shrank back with involuntary fear. Men who drew away from her white robe and whiter face muttering, "A mad woman--a mad dog!"
At last she has struggled through them, outside the Damascus Gate at last. Where--where? Yes, yonder is a crowd, it must be there.
"Let me through, for God's sake! Let me through!"
Staring stupidly at her, the crowd separated. There upon the ground, half-hidden under a pile of stones, lay--something. She threw herself upon her knees, pulling madly at the rough, broken rock with her delicate fingers. Then she gave a long, heart-broken scream and fell forward in merciful unconsciousness.