"No, no!" cried Zillah. "It must not be. If I live after my body is dead—and who can tell?—let me think of you as living here. I will come back often, and bless you; or I will watch over you as the moon gleams upon us. And if I do not live again, let there be one heart in this world to mourn for me. I have none other than thine, my dear Layah. My father does not love me, except for the riches I may bring him. To you I give these. See! This armlet was Hiram's gift. Let me put it on you. This necklace you shall wear. Do not deny me this favor, or I shall believe no one on earth loved me."
The two women remained much of the night weeping, or in grief too deep for tears: Zillah prayerful and resolute, the comforter of her handmaiden; as if the poor girl's sorrow were for some other misery than that of her consoler.
CHAPTER XXVI.
With the dawn all was astir. From behind rocks and trees the curious stared as Zillah's litter was carried along. At every spot where the path widened, so as to allow them to gather in crowds, many people prostrated themselves as if before a sacred ark. The day was yet young when the denser throngs indicated the immediate vicinity of the holy place. The servants of Ahimelek had gone before Zillah and prepared her pavilion, so that when she stepped veiled from the litter she entered alone the seclusion of her own chamber.
A vast amphitheatre of rocks, rising almost perpendicularly hundreds of feet, abruptly closes the valley of the Adonis. A deep and dark cave opens at the base of this precipice, like some ominous portal of Sheol itself. From its black jaws issues the torrent, hailing its first glimpse of the light with wild roar, like that of some beast startled in its den by the flash of the hunter's torch. Tossing high its mane of spray, it leaps wildly down from ledge to ledge, until it stretches itself for its long race through the deep ravine below. Its course is lined with trees—gigantic oaks, their limbs gnarled and torn, like those of veteran gladiators, by conflict with the storms of centuries; tall pines whose lofty tufts at noonday throw shadows, like patches of night, into the gorge below. Nature here seems to resent the intrusion of men, and drops a sense of solitude among the noisy crowds, or lifts them in spite of their revelry to an awe of her own vast mysteries. It is a spot where men, if they have no genuine revelation, are tempted to invent gods; to shape them into phantasies of overwrought imagination, and clothe them in the shadowy habits of their fears.
Close beside the Fountain of Adonis rose the Temple of Astarte. In front was a quadrangular court, in the open portion of which the throngs of votaries walked, and beneath whose cloistered sides they rested in extravagant ease and sanctioned vice. In the centre of the court stood the great conical stone, the symbol of deity, on the top of which, twice a year, a chosen priest sat and presented to the divinity the prayers of those who sent their petitions up to him winged with sufficient gifts to warrant their flight to the goddess. White doves flitted through the air, perched upon the projecting stone-work of the porticos, and flocked on the marble pavement regardless of the convenience of human beings, whose superstition made reverent space for the birds which Astarte had chosen to be her favorite symbol. The cooing of the doves, intermingled with the softest notes of flutes floating lasciviously from hidden places, melted into the murmur of the stream. The natural perfume of plants and flowers was supplemented by the incense of rarest spices, which loaded the atmosphere with the illusion of some other world beyond the shores of Araby the Blest.
Back of the great court an ascent of steps led to the temple. Folding gates of bronze guarded the sacred precincts from unhallowed intrusion. Gilded beams held aloft the roof of cedar, carved with grotesque symbols.
The statue of the goddess stood colossal in size and exquisite in form and decoration. In her right hand she held the sceptre, in her left the distaff; for, while she swayed the hearts of women, she was at the same time the patroness and rewarder of their domestic industry. On her head was a tower of gold, whose gleaming spikes well imitated the rays of the sun by day. But at night her peculiar glory was revealed. Then the sacred stone that was set in her crown glowed with mysterious light, and filled the temple with soft rays as of the moon. The central gleam from the stone followed the beholder as an eye, shooting the beam from the omniscience of the goddess into the very soul of the devotee. A statue of Baal sometimes floated in the air, and invited the questions of worshippers, to which it gave oracular response by swaying forward if the answer were affirmative, and backward if a request were refused.