A moment or two afterwards Ribâta noiselessly entered the room.
Belshazzar held out both hands, greeting his friend with such an air of weary helplessness that Ribâta stared at him uncomfortably.
"Name of the great Marduk, Belshazzar, what is come to thee?" he asked, holding his friend at arm's-length and looking into his face with a mixture of sympathy and perplexity.
"Hush! Curb thy voice! She will be disturbed."
Ribâta looked about him with intense curiosity. "Belshazzar, art thou gone mad? What is this thing that absents thee from thy duties? Thou art needed to-day—in council—at the review—"
"Nay—let others look to these things; let my father look to his own," whispered Belshazzar, in reply, drawing his friend down on the cushions beside him.
Ribâta found no answer to the words. Here was a Belshazzar whom he did not know. He ventured no further remarks, but remained sitting quietly beside his friend—waiting. By degrees, as the silence continued without much prospect of abating, Bit-Shumukin's eyes began to study the passive face of Istar. The nobleman had never before been so near her; and never before, even in the old days when he had seen her, towering in a cloud of silver above the multitude in her triumphal car, had he been so impressed with her divine purity. There was that in her face, marked and mortalized by suffering as it was, that put mortal things far away from her. His wonder at Belshazzar's boldness grew greater. The spirit which could have moved any man to look upon that face with a feeling of equality, daring the hope of making her his own, was enough, in Ribâta's eyes, to raise that man above the level of humanity. He turned to look upon the prince. Belshazzar lay back on the divan, lost in some unfathomable reverie. Ribâta hesitated to bring him back into the present, yet felt a kind of discomfort in the presence of these two strange beings. Unable to contain himself, he suddenly started up, with the idea of leaving the apartment. Belshazzar, however, was instantly roused by his move.
"Ribâta," he said, quietly, "do not go from us."
The friend turned to him, answering: "My lord knows there is much to be done. I go to thy work."
Belshazzar rose and laid both hands tenderly on the shoulders of his friend. "My brother," he said, "for my father, and for the sake of the crown that will one day be mine, I have labored long; and for them I will labor again, even unto the end. But now, for a little while, I tarry here, beside the bed of my beloved, for whose coming I have waited many weary months. Then wilt thou not watch here with me through one little hour? I ask it for the love I bear thee, Bit-Shumukin; and be sure that there is no other in Babylon, nay, or in all the world, that could hold thy place in my heart."