Had Nisroch descended bodily from his pedestal, or Ninus started up like a ghost from the gaping floor, Semiramis could scarcely have changed so suddenly to the cold impassive rigidity of marble. Following the direction of her stony gaze, Sarchedon beheld, emerging, as it were, from the very pannelling of the chamber, a dark face and armed figure he recognised as those of the shield-bearer. Sargon, returning by a secret passage from strewing reeds on the floor above, had thus unwillingly interrupted an interview which his own instincts told him it was very dangerous to have witnessed. With oriental readiness, indeed, his countenance assumed an expression of unconscious stolidity; but in his heart he knew that the queen's eye had identified him. And it was too late. Sarchedon, though without a weapon, would have sprung at the intruder, but the queen laid her hand, firm enough now, on his arm.
"It is not time," she said in accents so unmoved, so pitiless, that they made his blood run cold. "To-morrow, Sarchedon, we meet again here, at the same hour." Then changing her tone to one of the deepest tenderness, added, "I will claim that amulet you wear before the whole of Babylon;" and so, whispering "farewell," was gone.
When she vanished from his sight, Sarchedon could almost have believed he was mocked by the illusions of a dream.
Ere she left the temple, Semiramis did not fail to clap her hands, and summon Assarac to her presence. With more than usual graciousness, she bade him attend her to the gate, and when beyond the hearing of certain priests who were busied about their usual offices, asked with a smile, "that shield-bearer, Sargon, is a stout warrior, I have heard. Can you depend on him?"
"To the death!" answered the eunuch. "Less will not serve him. He requires blood for blood."
"If the flames do their work, there need be no bloodshed," was the reply. "But of course he must never leave the temple alive."
"Of course," assented Assarac; and so the Great Queen passed calmly on to her own royal dwelling beyond the river.