XIII
On the morrow he left his mean brick dwelling in the Jewry, and received her alone in a marble-paved chamber in the Palace, the walls adorned with carvings of flowers and birds, minutely worked, the ceiling with arabesques formed of thin strips of painted wood, the air cooled by a fantastic fountain playing into a pool lined with black and white marbles and red tiling. Lattice-work windows gave on the central courtyard, and were supplemented by decorative windows of stained glass, wrought into capricious patterns.
"Peace, O Messiah!" Her smile was dazzling, and there was more of gaiety than of reverence in her voice. Her white teeth flashed 'twixt laughing lips. Sabbataï's heart was beating furiously at the sight of the lady of his dreams. She was clad in shimmering white Italian silk, which, draped tightly about her bosom, showed her as some gleaming statue. Bracelets glittered on her white wrists, gems of fire sparkled among her long, white fingers, a network of pearls was all her head-dress. Her eyes had strange depths of passion, perfumes breathed from her skin, lustreless like dead ivory. Not thus came the maidens of Israel to wedlock, demure, spotless, spiritless, with shorn hair, priestesses of the ritual of the home.
"Peace, O Melisselda," he replied involuntarily.
"Nay, wherefore Melisselda?" she cried, ascending to the leewán on which he stood.
"And wherefore Messiah?" he answered.
"I have seen thee in visions—'tis the face, the figure, the prophetic beauty—But wherefore Melisselda?"
He laughed into her eyes and hummed softly:—
"'From her bath she arose,
[144] Pure and white as the snows,
Melisselda.'"