And there in the glory of the Italian sunshine, her ardent, unbalanced nature, starved in the chilly convent, yielded to passion, for there were many to love her. But to none would she give herself in marriage. "I am the Messiah's destined bride," she said, and her wild eyes had always an air of waiting.
XII
And in the course of years the news of her and of her prophecy travelled to Sabbataï Zevi, and found him at Cairo the morning after he had spoken to the Sphinx in the great silences. And to him under the blue Egyptian sky came an answering throb of romance. The womanhood that had not moved him in the flesh thrilled him, vaguely imaged from afar, mystically, spiritually.
"Let her be sent for," he said, and his disciples noted an unwonted restlessness in the weary weeks while his ambassadors were away.
"Dost think she will come?" he said once to Abraham Rubio.
"What woman would not come to thee?" replied the beggar. "What dainty is not offered thee? I trow natheless that thou wilt refuse, and that I shall come in for thy leavings."
Sabbataï smiled faintly.
"What have I to do with women?" he murmured. "But I would fain know what hath been prophetically revealed to her!"
One afternoon his ambassadors returned, and announced that they had brought her. She was resting after the journey, and would visit him on the morrow. He appointed their meeting in the Palace of the Saraph-Bashi. Then, unable to rest, he mounted the hill of the citadel and saw an auspicious golden glow over the mosques and houses of Cairo, illumining even the desert and the Pyramids. He stood watching the sun sink lower and lower, till suddenly it went out like a snuffed candle.