"Be it so," he answered in a grave quiet voice, so unlike his usual tones that she glanced anxiously towards him. He seemed sad and troubled, yet looked like a man whose loyalty was still unshaken and unimpeachable.
"And you are tired of it at last?" she asked, in the same mocking accents.
"It is too late to change now," was his answer, with a wan and weary smile.
"Ninyas refused you?" she continued, looking straight into his eyes.
He bowed his head in silence.
"But I have only laughed at you," she murmured, drawing her veil hastily over her face. "And, Sethos, have you passed your life in Babylon and not found out that liking grows with laughter as blossoms come with rain? I am not a king, I am only a woman; and I cannot deny a faithful servant who asks the reward he has toiled through storm and sunshine to attain."
He would have passed his arm round her waist, but with a dexterous twirl, the result, perhaps, of considerable practice, she placed herself out of reach.
"No," she said with imposing force and gesture, "my friend, and more than friend, this is not a time for follies such as these. Some day, when the heavy hand of Baal has been taken off this unhappy city, when men's flocks and herds and wives and children have ceased to be at the command of those who are but hewers of wood and drawers of water in the temple, I may peradventure suffer you to—to—well, to touch the tip of my finger with your lips. But now, the first duty of every son of Ashur is to cast off this hateful yoke that bows his nation to the dust. O that the old lion had but lived to see the white robes lording it in his well-beloved city! He would have cleared them out with fire and sword, ay, though all the host of heaven had come down from the stars to take their part.
"Look at me! O, I know well you never take your eyes off me if you can help it; but I am serious now. Look at me, I say—a woman who in her life before never knew a thought nor care weightier than the smoothing of a plait, the planting of a bodkin: I tell you I would take up spear and shield to-morrow, if I might help to lay Assarac and his priests in their blood at the altar before which they serve. What have they done for us? What has Baal himself done for us since he has governed from the throne of Nimrod? Corn is dear, water scarce, the people starve, and the priests wax fatter, prouder, fiercer, day by day. Even Beladon, who used to be meek and gentle as a weaned child, and was indeed a personable youth, and one of my truest friends—even Beladon, I say, holds that we are to be at his beck and call without question or murmur, you and I, and every one within the hundred gates of the city wall."
"May Nisroch tear him limb from limb!" exclaimed Sethos, in high wrath; for he had long been jealous of the comely young priest's intimacy with Kalmim, and it was in no ignorance of his feelings that the latter now worked upon her listener with the hated name.