On the mountain brow they took their morning meal, with which Elnathan's well-filled hamper supplied them. For an hour Zillah must rest. The cloaks of the men made her couch. It would be well for her to sleep; but the over-excitement of the day and night could not be allayed at the call of expediency. She could only promise to lie still if Hiram were by her. Manasseh and Elnathan assumed the duty of picket guards, and wandered back over the road they had come, to give warning in case of pursuit. Of this, however, they had little fear, at least for that day, as they had chosen a path which would hardly be thought of by others; the way of flight being naturally down the river Adonis, where one could be lost in the crowds and easily take to the sea; for the escape of such a person as Zillah would be thought of in connection with some wide preparation looking to future abode in a distant Phœnician colony, or perhaps in Greece or Egypt.
Zillah's chief fear was not danger from men. The superstition of her religion still held a partial spell over her mind which no resolution could break at once. The habitual thoughts of a lifetime will linger and impress us in spite of our calling them unreasonable. Zillah felt that she had challenged Astarte. In her keen imagination, the indignant eyes of the goddess were turned upon her. They burned her. She could not rest. But there was a counter-spell in the kiss of her companion, which would have gone far to exorcise these demons of fear and religious anxiety, even had he never uttered his stout words of disbelief in the whole system of Baalism.
Zillah's spirit was strong and self-assertive to a degree seldom shown by women or men, else she had never proposed to herself, and followed so nearly to completion, the project of self-sacrifice rather than submit to the custom of Astarte. But when with Hiram, her whole soul, her opinions as well as her will, became plastic to the touch of his thoughts and purpose. His soul was the mold into which her nature, melted by the fire of her love, ran and reformed itself. That Baal had not received him to an estate of divinity lessened not a whit her real reverence for Hiram; it only destroyed the sense of awe with which she had come to think of him. His loving humanity was more to her now than even her ideal of his godhead had been. He was her Adonai, her lord indeed. If he had diminished in magnitude, he had come nearer, and so was greater to her. Her heart worshipped and adored, though she did not call it worship. Simple love had wrought all this. Surely love must be divine to perfect that relation between human creatures which formal religion only aims to accomplish between the soul and a god!
Zillah looked into the face of Hiram as he bent over her, and thought something like this: "Oh, if a god were like him! If I could feel towards the divinity as I feel towards him! Then I would be a priestess indeed!"
"Have no scruple nor dread concerning Astarte," said Hiram, divining her thoughts. "Have I not found out that our religion is all a lie? My absorption into Baal the priests knew to be no more a falsehood than are all their teachings. Hanno is less false to them than they are to the people. See yonder pile they call a temple. From here how small in comparison with the mighty height of the mountains back of it! That little cloud of white smoke and incense from the fire they keep always burning, how insignificant under the white glory of the morning that bursts over Lebanon and fills all the sky above us! How cruel the sacrifice of bird or beast or child seems in a world which the real God has made so beautiful and filled with the sweet air! And how good he must be to have ever thought of making such a creature as my Zillah, and giving me eyes to see her and a heart to love her!" He bent low, and worshipped her with a kiss. "If there be any god, he is one of kindness, who hates cruelty, whose deep abomination must be for such things as you and I have escaped. I would live alone with this thought, and be inspired by it to happiness, if all the world believed the contrary."
"Do any people believe as you—as we—do, dear Hiram?"
"Perhaps no people do; but I am sure that some persons do. I met a man in Jerusalem who helped me to my faith, vague as it is. The Jews have sacrifices and many forms of worship; but one Malachi, whom some day you shall know, sees through all forms. His God is only a spirit—a spirit of right and love. The forms of religion with him are only like our letters, the shape suggesting a meaning that we put into it. Who would think that this"—drawing a few marks on the rock—"meant my love for you? So little can express so much! But to whom does it express it? Only to you and me, who feel our love. So the forms of religion represent great thoughts. But for whom? Only for those who have first felt them. Malachi was looking one night at a lamp flame very intently, and I asked:
"'What part of the flame is the most beautiful?'
"Manasseh, who was with us, said, 'He sees only the smoke that wreathes itself above it, for he is always brooding of gloomy things.'
"'No,' replied Malachi, 'I like to look through the centre, where it has no color, before the flame has got red.'