"What imports? God is everywhere. Was not our Maimonides—he at whose tomb we worship in Tiberias—himself once a Mussulman? Did he not say that if it be to save our lives naught is forbidden?"
He moved to take her in his arms, but this time it was she that drew back. Her eyes flashed.
"Nay, as a man, I love thee not. Thou art divine or naught; God or Impostor!"
"Melisselda!" She ignored his stricken cry.
"Nay, this ordeal hath endured long enough," she replied sternly. "Confess, I have been proof."
"I am neither God nor Impostor," he said brokenly. "Ah! say not that thou canst not love me as a man. When thou didst first come to bless my life I had not yet declared myself Messiah."
"Who knows what I thought then? A wild girl, crazed by the convent, by the blood shed before my childish eyes, I came to thee full of lawless passions and fantastic dreams. But as I lived with thee, as I saw the beauty of thy thought, thy large compassion, the purity of thy life amid temptations that made me jealous as a woman of Damascus, then I knew thee a God indeed."
"Nay, when I knew thee I knew myself man. But as our followers grew, as faith and fortune trod in my footsteps, my blasphemous dream revived; I believed in thy vision of the Kingdom. When I divided the world I thought myself Messiah indeed. But as I sat on my throne at Abydos, with worshippers from the world's end kissing my feet, a hollow doubt came over me, a sense of dream, and hollow voices echoed ever in my ear, asking, 'Art thou Messiah? Art thou Messiah? Art thou Messiah?' I strove to drown them in the festive song; but in the stillness of the night, when thou wast sleeping at my side, the voices came back, and they cried mockingly, 'Man! Man! Man!' And when Nehemiah came—"
"Man!" interrupted Melisselda impatiently. "Cease to cozen me. Have I not known men? Ay, who more? Their weaknesses, their vanities, their lewdnesses—enough! To-morrow thou shalt assert the God."
He threw himself back on the divan and sighed wearily. "Leave me, Melisselda. Go to thy rest; to-night I must keep vigil alone. Perchance it is my last night on earth."