The prince royal was taken aback. This was not a woman's way, yet neither was it after the manner of men. He tried her again, this time more gently, with reason, with persuasion, finally with undisguised entreaty. She did not change. The dependent Istar, Istar the supplicator, the woman, was gone. In her place was come the oracle of the mercy-seat. Belshazzar dared not be angered by her unchanging assurance. In the end he acknowledged himself defeated. He could only kneel and implore that the hour of her home-coming be soon. Then, having held her for one moment more in his arms, he left her, wrapping the mantle closely about him as he stepped forth again into the hot sunshine of his new and mysterious world.
As for Istar, with the answering of her prayer she entered the land of heart's peace. God in high heaven had not forgotten her. Belshazzar, on earth below, waited her coming. She could feel that the day of her suffering was close at hand, and she was fortifying herself to endure it. Thus ten days—ten days of the fair spring—passed by. Istar's black-veiled form was seen morning and evening on the temple platform, and she sat in the temple regularly at the mercy-hour, but did not ascend the ziggurat. During this time she knew but ten uneasy moments. These were when, once each day, always, as it were, by chance, she encountered the lean and bent figure of Daniel the Jew, who lurked, morning and evening, about this spot. His thin, vulture-like face, with its scrawny, gray-streaked beard, and his small, beady, piercing eyes, haunted Istar's thoughts, and remained with her as an omen of evil; and she shrank from him even less for herself than for some unreasonable ill that he seemed to promise to Belshazzar, her earth-lover. Daniel never addressed her, never failed profoundly to salute her, never remained longer than a bare second within her sight. And she strove to put him from her mind, and to give all of her days and nights to careful preparation for the approaching hours of her trial.
On the morning of April 21st her attendants found her lying in a swoon on her bed. She was quickly revived, and awoke to the world with a look of such happiness in her face that her women wondered silently, and went back to their duties rejoicing. Istar attended the morning sacrifice—a thing that she had not done for three months past. She drank a cupful of milk, watched the goat's flesh roasted on the altar, heard the prayers for the morning, and extended the mercy-hour far into the afternoon. The sun hung just above the horizon when she re-entered the court-yard of her dwelling and called for her evening meal. With unquestioning surprise it was brought her, and she ate of it. Then, in the mellow evening, she said her farewell to the consecrated home where she had dwelt so long.
As Istar left her dwelling and walked slowly towards the foot of the ziggurat, she saw that the whole city lay in a flood of gold. Her steps were slow and fraught with pain. As she halted at the foot of the high tower to look upward, wondering how she should reach its top, a voice from another sphere spoke to her and bade her hasten her steps. It was almost seven months ago that her feet had last touched this pavement. Then she had not been physically weak, but mentally—! She sighed as she remembered her terror of herself and of all her surroundings. At last, with a deep breath, she began her ascent. Up, up, and up, step by step, while the glorified light of day's death swam before her vision and the evening wind fanned her cheeks, while the sweet scent of the flowers that covered the desert was borne to her by the breeze, she went, a prayer in her heart, a resolute determination to endure bravely holding her thoughts. Up and up she mounted, till at last the empty summit of the tower was gained, and she stood again at the door of the room that had seen her incarnation.
Here, on the height, Istar stopped to look out over Babylon. It stretched around and below her like a mirage, like the vision of a holier city, wrapped all in clouds of blinding fire. A little to the east, near enough so that the white designs on the shining turquoise ground-work were fairly distinct, rose, from the tufty green of the surrounding park, the new palace built by Nabonidus, in which Belshazzar lived. Along the east side of this building ran the bright Euphrates, passing here the most imposing point in all its mighty course. Opposite the new palace, on the other bank, were the two huge structures once inhabited by Nabopollassar and his son, that greatest of Babylonish rulers. Across from Nebuchadrezzar's former home, connected with it by the great bridge, itself a triumph of engineering, was the palace-crowned mound of the great one's Median queen, called by subsequent generations "the hanging gardens." This alone of all the unused royal dwellings was kept in repair by the present ruler. And now, at the time of the day's highest glory, Istar's eyes eagerly sought its fresh verdure, the tier on tier of leafy foliage that hid such fragrances and such blossoms as she rarely saw. And while she gazed upon the monument of a king's devotion, the lonely woman found it in her heart to wish that she might have been that queen whose sorrows and whose earthly joys were now so comfortably ended, whose mortality had come to dust, whose soul enjoyed its just rewards.
Istar's eyes moved on down the river to the lower part of the city, which consisted of acre upon acre of low, brick buildings, hardly relieved by a single tower or raised roof, stretching in gray monotony off to where Imgur-Bel suddenly reared its gigantic height skyward. Over this wall and the top of its still loftier brother, Nimitti-Bel, Istar, high as she stood, could not see. Her brick-weary eyes yearned for some glimpse of the quiet palm-groves that lined the river-bank beyond Babylon. Indeed, their fragrant freshness was borne up to her by the evening wind. Closing her eyes, she saw them as, nine months before, she had watched them from her barge on the way to Erech. And thus, while she contemplated many things, the sunset light began to fade, the shadows mingled together over the gray roofs and bright towers of the city. Twilight deepened; and the moon was not yet risen. So at last Istar turned from the far-stretching scene and lifted up the curtain of her long-unused shrine.
She was greeted by darkness. Evidently it was many weeks since any one had entered the little room. A fine, white dust lay sifted over the rugs, the table, the golden chair, the couch where Charmides last had lain. Istar looked round with a sob in her heart—a sob of pitiable weakness and pain. It was impossible now for her to summon any attendant. Neither had she strength to descend the ziggurat again. Leaving the curtain pulled wide open, that she might feel some communication with the world beyond, she went to the couch, removed the top rug with all its dust, then let fall her veil, and offered up one last prayer for pity and for strength before she lay down resignedly in the night.
Twilight slowly passed across the earth and trailed away into the beyond. Thereupon came terror of the dark, together with the first stabs of sharp pain. She had one swift, torturing moment, and a low cry at the strangeness of it escaped her. Then calmness returned. She was prepared, she thought, for the rest. One moment, two, three, passed, in strained expectation. The darkness hung around her like a covering, but the suffering did not return. Her lips moved continually, but her brain refused to work. It seemed to her that the night must be passing. Soon, perhaps, she might sleep. Her eyes were closed; her mind was slipping away into freedom, when—she started up again. It was once more upon her, this dreaded thing; and now she knew that there was no escape. When it had passed this time she waited, stiff and strong, hands clenched, breath coming and going rapidly, for the return.
It came once again, and yet again, more and more swiftly, more and more terribly. She made no sound now. Her eyes stared straight into the blackness with the gaze of one that does not see. Here was something that, with all her months of preparation, she was not prepared for. No imagination could have painted this; and her loneliness but added to her terror. From the night a thousand malignant eyes seemed fixed upon her with the look of Daniel the Jew. Yet presently she discovered that these eyes were stars—fair, silver stars that shone, far away, through the open door-way. A little later the night grew luminous, and the hideous darkness was softened and smoothed away. Pale, yellow rays shot up the sky, dimming the stars' white radiance, banishing their gaze. It was the moon, the blessed moon, Istar's father, who, entering the heavens, put her tormentors to flight. The woman's thoughts were growing incoherent. She was a little delirious. Her body was racked and torn and bruised. The agony, too great to be realized and endured, drove her into numb unconsciousness—an unconsciousness that was hideous with subconscious understanding. The one thought to which she clung through all the hours of anguish was of the morning—the merciless daylight, when the searching sun, the discerning, prying sun, must come upon her here, must see, must know—must disclose all to the wondering world.