"An embossed girdle!"
"A shield of brass!"
"A score of new bowstrings!"
"Or fifty shekels of silver, and no more said," exclaimed the trader, turning from side to side, with the air of a man overcome by his own liberality.
"Add to them a hundred," urged the chief; "and go thy way, thou and thy camels and thy servants, with the goodly slave I have given thee."
"One hundred shekels, and he is mine," returned the trader, placing his hand on the Assyrian's shoulder in token of ownership; and thus becoming the possessor of Sarchedon at something less than the price of a good horse.
Regret was fruitless—resistance impossible. Bound hand and foot, he could but grind his teeth, and submit.
The merchants made ready their camels forthwith, taking advantage of the coolness of night to journey through the desert, and guiding their course by the pilotage of the stars. So noiseless was their departure, after the bustle of concluding their bargain subsided, that they had disappeared with her lover in the darkness, ere Ishtar knew they were clear of the encampment. Seeking the spot where she had last seen Sarchedon, to find it empty, the maddening truth flashed upon her, and she could bear no more. Sick, faint, despairing, she uttered one plaintive cry, and fell senseless on the sand.
The first of the tribe who found her, lifted that drooping form, with the ease and something of the pitiful admiration with which he would have picked up a broken lily, and bore her gently to the chiefs tent. Here she was tended carefully during the night, its gigantic owner stepping softly to its entrance at intervals to assure himself of her state. With morning she was able to rise, and as her faculties resumed their vigour, she realised the whole force of the blow that had fallen.
Ishtar's nature, however, was one which is only found amongst women. Shrinking instinctively from everything approaching to pain or danger—fond, trusting, sensitive, and docile—she could yet brave and endure all things on behalf of those she loved; identifying herself so wholly with their welfare as to forget her own fears, her own weakness, and combining with the martyr's patient courage that cheerful energy, which, looking only to duty, overcomes, by sheer persistence, the difficulties it ignores. Sorrow might bend, but could not break her spirit. Like certain flowers which, tread them down as you will, lift their fair heads directly the crushing footstep has passed on, it rose, for all its meekness, the more invincible, because of its misfortunes.